A federal judge in New Mexico granted the Department of Energy and the New Mexico Environment Department until Oct. 7 to continue settlement talks on changes to agreements governing legacy waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
U.S. Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar on Tuesday ordered another 90-day extension of the settlement talks after the parties said in a joint status report they have wrapped up negotiations on one of two key documents.
“Since filing their last status report in April, the parties have completed negotiations on the Consent Order,” the state and the feds said in their status report. “They are now working on a companion settlement agreement and have exchanged drafts of that document.”
The federal and state authorities have been meeting and exchanging documents since November 2021 seeking to overhaul the 2016 compliance order on consent between DOE and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). The consent order governs the remediation of legacy hazardous and mixed waste at the Manhattan Project nuclear site.
In their status reports, the parties have said reworking complex legal documents is time-consuming and the process was slowed in part by widespread New Mexico wildfires in 2022, which demanded attention of key leaders at the agencies.
The talks grew out of a NMED lawsuit against DOE brought during the administration of current Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s (D). The litigation seeks to terminate the 2016 consent order reached with DOE during the administration of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R).
