The New Mexico Environment Department on Wednesday rolled out a draft of a revised consent order governing hazardous waste cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The package, presented at a meeting of the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board, includes a 45-day period for public comment that ends May 26.
“We’ll have to sit down with the Department of Energy,” said state Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn, expressing the hope that the consent order between the state and the federal government could be finalized within the next three months. “By the Fourth of July would be a good target.”
Flynn emphasized a few basic principles based on lessons the department has learned from the original consent order that was signed by the parties in 2005 but failed to achieve many of its remediation milestones by the end of last year. Flynn said he wants an accelerated cleanup process with less time spent on paperwork and more time actively doing remediation, and a sensible campaign approach to the remaining cleanup challenges at the lab.
The campaign approach, described more fully in Section VII of the new draft compliance order, is organized around related projects that have synergies, share priorities, or are physically co-located. Campaigns have fewer deliverables but more precise and enforceable milestones along with targets for the next two years.
NMED Environmental Protection Division Director Kathryn Roberts, who discussed how these principles were reflected in the draft consent order, said one thing that has not changed is that all the legacy work that remained to be done from the original order is still there.
LANL’s cleanup budget this fiscal year is $189 million, but Flynn says the program needs $255 million annually to make progress. Demonstrations of success, he believes “will leverage more funding for cleanup going forward.”
“This is not a final document, but a best shot,” Flynn said. “The goal of public comment is to make it better.”