A revised consent order governing cleanup of legacy hazardous waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico aims to be more flexible than the original document. At the same time, it is designed to be more enforceable and focused on accomplishing the work at hand, according to state officials who have shaped the revisions.
As presented for public review Wednesday by New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn and Resource Protection Division Director Kathryn Roberts, the draft contains changes, but also retains the full scope of work covered in the original document, signed by the state and the federal government on March 1, 2005. Until the Department of Energy and NMED reach agreement on the new document, cleanup work will continue under the original settlement, as modified in 2012. Speaking to the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board in Albuquerque, Flynn said he hoped a revised consent order could be finalized within the next three months. “By the Fourth of July would be a good target,” he said.
The original consent order settled a long-running legal struggle between the state and the Department of Energy about how to approach the complex problem of cleaning up years of storage, handling, treatment, and disposal of hazardous waste at the nuclear weapons laboratory, an unknown amount of which had been released into the surrounding environment during the first five decades of operations. Some releases, although reduced, continue today.
The original draft order was issued in 2002, prescribing a series of environmental investigations that would provide a framework for corrective actions to remove or neutralize the hazardous materials from causing further harm. This framework grew into a 300-page document that defined in elaborate detail the objectives and goals to which DOE and the New Mexico Environment Department were committed.
In 2011, after the Las Conchas Fire threatened the legacy hazardous waste storage Area G, Gov. Susana Martinez called for a realignment of the waste priorities to hasten removal of the plutonium-contaminated waste to permanent storage at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico. The agreement was modified in 2012, at which time it was becoming obvious that the Department of Energy was unlikely to meet the cleanup milestones in the original order. A plan to renegotiate the settlement at a future date was included in the new framework.
The subsequent 2014 radiological event at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz’s decision to transfer cleanup oversight from the National Nuclear Security Administration to the DOE Office of Environmental Management, and the phased withdrawal of responsibility from the laboratory’s current manager and operator to a new contractors yet to be selected encouraged the process of renewing the troubled cleanup mission, with a clear set of objectives that Flynn had identified going forward.
During his presentation this week, Flynn emphasized a few fundamental principles based on lessons the employees of the department have learned from years of administering the original consent order. One of the major changes is what NMED calls a “campaign approach.” Rather than list each individual project, with a string of deliverables and milestone dates for every one, the remediation work has been organized into 17 campaigns to complete the scope of work at the lab. These include, for example, a chromium interim measures and characterization campaign, which is working to control a plume of hexavalent chromium contamination in the groundwater under the lab and prevent the chromium from migrating into San Ildefonso, a neighboring pueblo. Continuing previous work, the studies and corrective actions are expected to take another two to three years.
The campaign approach will be organized in logical units based on factors such as location and the work to be done, and prioritized according to budgets and stakeholder perceptions of risk levels.
Area G, a 63-acre site, and Area L, a small nearby tract that was used to dump hazardous liquid wastes, are combined into a single campaign that will include developing long-term solutions. No new milestones or deadlines have been developed for those projects so far. In the new draft consent order, the combined Areas G and L campaign is projected to take about five years.
In order to accelerate cleanup at the lab, the department has taken out all descriptive language about investigations. By downplaying preliminary “pencil-sharpening” matters and concentrating on defining the appropriate methods and procedures in basic terms, but not specifying “how” to accomplish a task, NMED expects to streamline the process of getting directly involved in the immediate cleanup goal. To solve the “too-many-cooks” problem, in which too many people have to sign off on an action, the draft revision calls for each party to designate an agency manager with decision-making authority, one from NMED and one from DOE.
There will be an annual planning process involving both agencies, which will establish milestones for the current fiscal year and target dates for the next two years. Unlike the previous order, this would allow for more supportive projections and more flexible revisions depending on funding availability. To maintain cleanup standards at rigorous levels, Roberts said all milestones will be subject to penalties.
The draft consent order enjoyed a warm reception at the NMCAB, as might be expected from a group that has been in the loop concerning anticipated changes in the consent order for several months. The document will have a tougher sell among the nuclear watchdogs in the community. Nuclear Watch New Mexico quickly sent out a release critical of a number of what it charged were overly generous concessions to the laboratory and DOE for “failing to enforce environmental cleanup at Los Alamos.” For example, when NMED proposes in the draft consent order that “DOE shall update the milestones and targets…on an annual basis, accounting for such factors as…changes in anticipated funding levels,” NMED understands that as a benefit, because it enables flexibility and avoids costly surprises. Nuke Watch understands it to mean that DOE can hold environmental cleanup hostage to the federal agency’s budget, contradicting the original consent order’s intention to give the state power to compel funding for cleanup.
Furthermore, the group objects to inclusion of a statement that public participation requirements would not apply to future modifications of the order, reflecting a tendency and preference for excluding the public from important matters affecting their health and safety.
Asked about the decision to open a 45-day public comment period, the department answered in a statement, “There is no statutory requirement for a public comment period when revising a settlement agreement.” The statement recalled that the original consent order was approved after a 30-day public comment period without any public hearings, but that the current process allows for an extended comment period along with three public meetings.
