Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
5/1/2015
The Department of Energy and the New Mexico Environment Department this week reached a $73 million settlement in lieu of fines related to violations at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The settlement funds will go to a number of community and environmental projects near WIPP and Los Alamos. The deal comes after an initially adversarial start to talks when NMED levied $54 million in compliance orders against DOE in December. The tone changed once DOE senior officials, including Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, became directly involved in managing discussions with the state, NMED Secretary Ryan Flynn told WC Monitor this week. “Once it become clear that Secretary Moniz and [New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R)] were both committed to correcting the problem and making the facilities and the communities that host them stronger as a result of these issues, then we were able to stop posturing and really start working together to make sure that WIPP and LANL are viable for the long term,” Flynn said.
WIPP suffered an underground fire in February 2014, soon followed by a radiological release tied to waste processed at Los Alamos, leading to numerous violations cited by NMED in the compliance orders. The funding for the settlement will come, in large part, out of unpaid Fiscal Year 2014 fee to WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership and Los Alamos M&O Los Alamos National Security, a senior DOE official said this week. In FY 2014, LANS’ fee was dramatically reduced, with the contractor earning just $6.25 million out of $64.4 million in available award fee, while NWP earned a total of $561,266 out of $8.2 million in maximum available fee.
Though DOE committed much more funding in the settlement than it faced in the initial compliance order penalties, the deal is a “win-win” for DOE and the state given that NMED had been considering additional compliance orders related to the events that could have topped $100 million, Flynn said. “The number is larger than $54 million, but you have to take into account the fact that there was additional liability, especially at Los Alamos where we had additional violations where we had not yet assessed a compliance order for,” Flynn said. “It’s below the total amount of liability that they were potentially facing.”
Agreement Releases DOE from Consent Order Penalties
The agreement also resolves significant financial penalties DOE was facing for missed milestones related to the state’s Consent Order for cleanup at Los Alamos. “It gives them a release from any additional compliance action as a result of the release and we have also agreed to forego assessing penalties for missed deadlines and deliverables under the 2005 consent order at Los Alamos,” Flynn said. NMED and DOE will work on revising the consent order, with a goal of having a new order in place by the end of the calendar year. “That’s the next step we’ll turn our attention to,” Flynn said.
Projects Include Initiatives at WIPP, Los Alamos
The agreement highlighted several projects that would benefit WIPP, Los Alamos and surrounding communities. That includes $34 million for road and transportation improvements near WIPP, $12 million for transuranic waste transportation routes in the Los Alamos area, $10 million for critical water infrastructure upgrades at Los Alamos, $9.5 million for storm water management projects at LANL, $5 million for a Carlsbad emergency operations center and related training and $2.75 million for an “independent triennial compliance and operational review,” according to a DOE release.
Those projects were suggested by the state, DOE and local communities. “We didn’t want any window-dressing projects that didn’t meet the ultimate goal of either improving the facilities or the communities that house those facilities,” Flynn said. The timeline for implementing those projects has yet to be finalized. “Some of the projects are going to come into fruition fairly quickly, others are going to take more time. We’re just going to have to work together,” Flynn said.
WIPP May Stage More TRU Waste Aboveground
NMED also agreed to consider a permit modification that would allow a facility to stage additional transuranic waste from other sites aboveground at WIPP temporarily while operations there remain limited. “There is going to be a need to potentially consider allowing some TRU waste to be stored aboveground while we work the recovery process. That’s something that we have committed to considering as we move forward,” Flynn said. “There’s a public process associated with that, so we can’t prejudge an outcome. But it’s something we recognize needs to be considered. … There are issues in South Carolina, Idaho and Tennessee and we want to be able to help solve their problems.”
Upon announcing the agreement, Moniz said in a statement: “The Department of Energy and the State of New Mexico have worked together to identify projects at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and the Los Alamos National Laboratory that are mutually beneficial and do not detract from cleanup at these sites. I am pleased that we were able to find a solution that will allow the Department to focus on resuming operations at WIPP and improving our waste management operations, while providing benefit to the environment and to local communities in New Mexico.”
