The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management is renewing a $14.4 million grant for New Mexico State University to continue environmental monitoring near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
The Energy Department’s Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP, announced the five-year financial assistance grant April 30 to support the NMSU engineering college’s Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center.
Since the early 1991, the center has provided independent soil, water, and general environmental monitoring around WIPP. The facility’s research has been funded over the years via a DOE Carlsbad grant, usually amounting to between $2 million and $3 million per year, an Energy Department spokesperson said by email Tuesday.
The 26,000-square-foot Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center houses environmental and general radiochemistry laboratories, as well as a special plutonium-uranium lab. The facility has collaborated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Amentum-led WIPP manager Nuclear Waste Partnership to perform environmental monitoring for stakeholders around Carlsbad.
The center also conducts research on issues such as dirty bomb mitigation and cleanup of military small arms ranges.
