State, feds could get until July for Los Alamos cleanup settlement talks

A federal magistrate judge in New Mexico has been asked to give the state environmental regulator and the Department of Energy 90 more days to continue settlement talks over changes to a consent decree governing nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Citing continued progress, the parties asked U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar on Tuesday to stay the suit brought against DOE by the New Mexico Environment Department until July 11.

Progress toward settlement has occurred in recent months with the New Mexico agency sending its own proposal for revisions to a Los Alamos cleanup consent order on March 6, and the parties then followed up with an in-person meeting this past Monday, according to a joint status report filed by the parties this week.

“By May 1, 2023, the New Mexico Environment Department expects to give the Department of Energy a proposed redline draft of the revisions to the Consent Order,” the parties wrote in the joint status report.

In September 2021, the state New Mexico Environment Department under the administration of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) sued DOE over the 2016 Compliance Order on Consent on Los Alamos nuclear remediation. The Grisham administration considers the 2016 order, negotiated during the Gov. Susana Martinez (R) administration, weaker than an earlier version from 2005. 

The case is before the U.S. District Court in New Mexico.