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Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Permit Stops LANL Landfill Dumping
By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
Los Alamos National Laboratory must stop dumping radioactive waste at a lab landfill by the end of the year, New Mexico Environment Secretary Ron Curry ruled Tuesday.
Curry's decision to end the disposal of low-level waste at the lab's Area G landfill was included in a sweeping 10-year hazardous waste permit, the culmination of years of negotiation, hearings and conflict among state regulators, environmental groups and the labs.
For the lab, it offered a key victory. The state decided not to require the nuclear weapons research center to put up a bond potentially worth tens of millions of dollars to ensure long term cleanup of its hazardous waste sites.
Curry also ruled against the lab's continued use of open burning to dispose of explosive wastes.
"I am satisfied that the permit will protect New Mexicans, LANL workers, and the environment and provide the transparency and accountability that residents deserve. I'm particularly proud of the unprecedented public involvement that led to this final permit," Curry said in a statement.
Much of the permit, including provisions for state regulatory oversight of hazardous wastes at 24 sites around the sprawling nuclear weapons research center, was not controversial, with the lab, activists and state regulators in general agreement.
"The Lab agrees with the vast majority of the permit. We agree with Secretary Curry that it protects our neighbors, our workers, and the environment," lab spokesman Fred DeSousa said in a written statement.
"While we are disappointed in the ruling on open burning, we're pleased that Secretary Curry did not put an additional burden on the taxpayer by imposing financial assurance on the Lab. The Department of Energy is fully committed to meeting its environmental responsibilities at Los Alamos," DeSousa said.
The question of posting a bond, open burning and the future of Area G were the major points of contention during a lengthy series of hearings last spring.
The requirement to end disposal at Area G was a major victory for environmentalists, who have long complained about the continuing use of the mesa-top site as a dump for lab waste, said Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center, one of the groups that pushed for an end to the use of the site.
Hancock and others had argued that because other state regulations require cleanup or closure of the landfill by 2015, it made no sense to continue putting waste there in the meantime.
That 2015 closure could involve a permanent cover to prevent leakage, or excavation of the waste so it could be moved to a safer site. Curry ruled Tuesday that continued disposal of waste there in the meantime "could reduce the effectiveness of a final cover, or interfere with the excavation of interred wastes."
DeSousa said the lab has not made any decision about whether it might go to court to appeal any part of the decision.
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