The advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico wants New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) to renegotiate a 2016 consent order with the U.S. Department of Energy on cleanup of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
The organization in June urged Grisham to have the New Mexico Environment Department revisit the deal reached with the federal government during the administration of her predecessor, Susana Martinez (R).
The organization has yet to hear back from Grisham’s office, Scott Kovac, NukeWatch operations and research director, said in a Monday email.
The 2016 agreement essentially replaced a 2005 consent order, which included firm deadlines, to remediate LANL environmental problems, targeting hazardous waste included in industrial wastewater that ended up the canyon system under Los Alamos.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory has contamination resulting from nuclear weapons activities dating to the Manhattan Project during World War II.
The 2005 deal established 80 specific tasks to be completed by December 2015. It stipulated the Energy Department and its then-lab management contractor, the University of California, must request any extensions through the New Mexico Environment Department.
But on 13 of the tasks with missed deadlines NMED did not grant extensions. The incomplete tasks include submission of various reports and installation of groundwater monitoring equipment.
The 2016 order junked the prior compliance schedule and replaced it with a new risk-based campaign approach of related cleanup tasks, which will run into the 2030s.
NukeWatch challenged the new agreement in court. In July 2018, a federal judge refused to throw out the 2016 order, but sustained the potential financial penalties against DOE and then-contractor Los Alamos National Security for failing to accomplish 13 tasks identified in the 2005 order. The ruling could conceivably subject DOE to more than $300,000 in fines.
