Feds still unsure of extent of LANL water contamination
Toxic chromium plume appears to be growing and migrating, Energy official tells state lawmakers
More than a dozen years after a massive plume of contamination was discovered in the groundwater below Los Alamos National Laboratory — the result of the lab’s poor waste management practices four decades ago — a U.S. Department of Energy official told New Mexico lawmakers the agency is still uncertain about the extent of the pollution.
Cancer-causing chromium and other chemicals have continued to seep from the soil in Mortandad Canyon into the groundwater, and the plume appears to be growing and migrating, Doug Hintze, with the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office, told state lawmakers during a Thursday hearing in Los Alamos.
Chromium was detected at concentrations five times the state limit in July in a newly drilled well that laboratory maps had indicated was about 100 feet outside the perimeter of the plume, The New Mexican reported Saturday, based on lab data posted on an online site.
Hintze said this revelation was not surprising.
“It is very difficult to show how quickly it’s migrating,” he said of the contamination, “but we do believe it is migrating and growing.”
“The plume is in a different shape than what we had been showing on our charts or maps,” Hintze added.
His statements to lawmakers on the Legislative Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee were the lab’s strongest response to questions about the carcinogenic plume, which has been encroaching on a regional aquifer, since the chromium levels in the new well were publicized last week. Earlier this week, a field office spokesman said the data “did not indicate the plume was spreading,” but that it did help characterize “the extent of the chromium plume.”
Hintze’s testimony prompted lawmakers to say they would make an appeal to New Mexico’s congressional delegates, requesting more federal funds to expedite cleanup.
Committee Chairman Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, also told Hintze the lab must address the issue aggressively.
“Especially when we are dealing with aquifers, public water supply, public health,” Steinborn said, “we need to be aggressive.”
The lab had intended to use the tainted well, drilled earlier this year, to inject clean water into areas at the edge of the plume in an effort to contain the contamination. Now it appears that use of the well would risk spreading the underground contamination.
The Energy Department has been drilling a number of wells in the area of the plume to monitor the chromium levels and how they change. So far, there are fewer than two dozen monitoring wells, which Hintze said cost about $3 million each to drill.
The plume, believed to be a mile long, 100 feet thick and about a half-mile wide, is bordered on the south by San Ildefonso Pueblo land, and Hintze said it is migrating south and southeast.
A 2016 estimate said cleanup was expected to cost $180 million and would take several decades. Part of the process would involve injecting a form of molasses into the plume to convert highly carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, chromium-6, into less toxic chromium-3.
Rep. Cathrynn Brown, R-Carlsbad, asked if it is necessary to continue drill-
ing monitoring wells. “It seems to me you could buy a whole lot of molasses for two or three million dollars,” she said. “I want to see this thing get fixed.”
Lab cleanup of hazardous waste generated before 1999 is governed by an agreement between state and federal officials, called a consent order, that was overhauled last year under the Martinez administration after the lab failed to meet deadlines set under a previous agreement. Critics say the current consent order fails to
set deadlines for cleanup and doesn’t hold the federal government sufficiently accountable for ensuring the work is completed.
Steinborn said he was interested in exploring whether the state could renegotiate the cleanup order after a new governor takes office in 2019.
Contact Rebecca Moss at 505986-3011.