BY MARIAN NARANJO AND KATHY SANCHEZ, SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN | July 21, 2024 santafenewmexican.com
On Monday, top officials from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Office of Environmental Management will host a town hall on cleanup priorities.
A limited public question-and-answer period will be allowed, and it’s unclear whether the security administration will respond to written submissions. With only one town hall hosted annually, the public — especially fenceline New Mexicans and Indigenous community members — must be heard and considered.
A growing number of DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration projects are amassing joint public and tribal concern. At a February public meeting, Pueblo leadership, local officials, environmentalists, and community members voiced overwhelming opposition to the security administration’s Electrical Power Capacity Upgrade Project, a transmission line proposed to span the sacred Caja del Rio landscape.
The three-hour meeting saw no public support for the project and instead featured widespread concern agencies aren’t following legal requirements for environmental and cultural review. The All-Pueblo Council of Governors recently urged a pause in the project pending a tribally-led ethnographic study of the Caja del Rio.
Additionally, the National Nuclear Security Administration is developing Los Alamos National Laboratory’s sitewide environmental impact statement to evaluate potential impacts of expanded lab operations over the next 15 years. Given that the statement should have been completed in 2018 and LANL’s budget has doubled in the last five years to $5.15 billion, public concerns are growing about the lack of opportunity to review expansion plans.
Tribes and community organizations have urged the sitewide environmental impact statement to include analysis of controversial plans to increase plutonium pit production; seismic risk and safety upgrades; climate change and wildfire impacts; contamination runoff into the Rio Grande; and other major concerns.
During the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, LANL planned to release tritium vapor, an element 150,000 times more radioactive than the plutonium in nuclear weapon cores. Tritium, like other sources of ionizing radiation, can cause cancer, genetic mutations and birth defects, and assorted other adverse health effects. Only after aggressive calls by pueblos and community organizations for tribal consultation and public engagement did the lab pause its plans. Date of the tritium release is still to be determined.
Furthermore, LANL is contaminating New Mexico’s water. Its Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility has faced legal challenges since 2010 on improper waste management regulation. While the facility is permitted under the New Mexico Water Quality Act, it should be required to be regulated by the New Mexico Hazardous Waste Act because of known hazardous materials used at the facility.
What we see as conflicts of interest arose in 2018 and 2022 when two New Mexico Environment Department decision-makers engaged in permitting hearings left their jobs to be hired by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration. This has delayed community efforts to protect our precious water.
New Mexicans are familiar with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which promised to close its plutonium-contaminated waste disposal within 25 years. The Department of Energy now states WIPP must remain operational for at least six more decades to dispose waste from LANL and other sites. Don’t get us started about the droves of release accidents at both WIPP and LANL.
Disposal and cleanup are priorities, but prevention should be paramount. Our state’s recent victory against siting the country’s largest high-level radioactive waste repository clearly demonstrates a growing statewide movement against the legacy of using our people, lands, and water as the nation’s nuclear sacrifice.
We pray for our leaders, community members and relatives near and far facing distress caused by nuclear colonialism. We pray for the collective presence of all who value community health and protection of our sacred landscapes to stand with us. The town hall will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday at Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder in the Pueblo ballroom on the second floor.