“N3B is going after the low-hanging fruit, cleaning up less than 2,000 cubic yards of contaminated dirt,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “Let’s hear their plan for cleaning up 200,000 cubic yards of radioactive and toxic wastes at Area G that are already migrating towards our irreplaceable groundwater.”
Coghlan said N3B touting this small part of the cleanup smacks of “propaganda to promote the toothless 2016 consent order.”
BY: Scott Wyland [email protected]| Santa Fe New Mexican Dec 16, 2020
Los Alamos National Laboratory’s contractor in charge of cleaning up radioactive waste produced during the Cold War and Manhattan Project has completed its first goal under a 2016 agreement.
Newport News Nuclear BWXT, also known as N3B, finished removing almost 1,800 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris from four sites in Upper Mortandad, Upper Cañada del Buey and Threemile canyons.
Crews packed and shipped the material to a disposal site in Clive, Utah.
“Cleanup of these sites ultimately protects human health by eliminating the likelihood that contamination will reach the water system through stormwater runoff,” Brenda Bowlby, head of N3B’s soil remediation program, said in a statement.
Removing the toxic debris also protects the area’s wildlife, she added.
The cleanup project was one of 17 that N3B aims to do under the 2016 agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy and the state Environment Department.
N3B’s focus is on waste created before 1999. The lab’s operator, Triad National Security LLC, handles cleanup of newer waste.
One of the four sites was an area where effluent from the lab’s radioactive liquid waste treatment plant was released. Another site included surface contamination from explosive testing in an underground shaft. Another was the disposal area connected to what’s now an inactive firing site.
Maddy Hayden, a spokeswoman for the Environment Department, said N3B and the Energy Department have made some headway with the cleanup, but her agency has “significant concerns about their overall progress.”
“The [Environment] Department spent significant resources simply holding DOE and N3B accountable to the minimum expectations of their annual plan,” Hayden said, which included imposing a $58,000 fine in 2019.
The agency expects the lab to tackle the cleanup with the same scientific excellence it applies to national security, she said.
“N3B is going after the low-hanging fruit, cleaning up less than 2,000 cubic yards of contaminated dirt,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “Let’s hear their plan for cleaning up 200,000 cubic yards of radioactive and toxic wastes at Area G that are already migrating towards our irreplaceable groundwater.”
Coghlan said N3B touting this small part of the cleanup smacks of “propaganda to promote the toothless 2016 consent order.”
In 2005, the Energy Department and state forged a consent order, designed to speed legacy waste cleanup that had gone at a glacial pace until then.
But in 2016, the consent order was revised under Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, who sought more relaxed environmental oversight.
Hard deadlines and prescribed penalties for missing them without just cause were replaced by “milestones” or goals that are more easily renegotiated. Running late on a project can still draw a fine, but that’s become relatively rare.
Critics like Coghlan say it has allowed the Energy Department to avoid budgeting funds to ensure projects meet deadlines — causing the legacy cleanup to drag on years longer.
Environmental advocates hoped that Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham would reinstate tougher provisions in the consent order, but after two years in office, she has yet to change it.