New Mexico and the Department of Energy are close to resolving the state’s lawsuit about cleanup rules for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a federal judge Thursday granted the parties another 90 days to negotiate.
Lawyers for the state and the Department of Justice told the U.S. District Court for New Mexico that the two agencies were scheduled to meet on Jan. 25 to discuss proposed revisions to the consent order the federal government shared with the state in November.
So, the parties petitioned U.S. District Judge John Robbenhaar, who agreed to issue a stay until April 11 in the state’s nearly three year-old lawsuit. At that time, the parties will have to file another joint status report.
Under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s (D), the state sued DOE in 2021, seeking changes to the consent order finalized in 2016 by the administration of Lujan Grisham’s predecessor, former Gov. Susana Martinez (R).
“The parties agree that the proposed framework [arising from talks in 2022] appears to be a viable approach for potential revisions to the 2016 consent order and a potential settlement of this litigation,” according to the four-page status report docketed Wednesday.
The 2016 order sets out the rules for cleaning up Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear waste at Los Alamos and, since it was signed, cleanup has not moved fast enough, the Lujan Grisham administration says. Environmental groups in the state complained that the 2016 order removed hard, sitewide deadlines and gave DOE too free a hand to set its own workload at the site.
In November, DOE sent the New Mexico Environment Department the federal government’s written, conceptual proposal, to which the state responded on Dec. 30, the parties said Wednesday. After the planned Jan. 25 meeting between the two agencies, the state Environment Department planned to further supplement its written response to DOE.
“The parties believe that continued direct negotiation is most likely to lead to progress toward a possible settlement,” according to the status report.
Robbenhaar last extended the negotiating window on Oct.3 and, in addition to the latest status report, the parties submitted a draft of a one-page order for the judge to sign, which he did on Thursday. A series of New Mexico wildfires in 2022 limited the attention state and federal officials could devote to settlement talks for several months last year, the parties said.
