State urged to change LANL’s permit
Groups concerned about chromium plume
Dozens of people told state Environmental Department officials Wednesday they want to see changes made to a groundwater discharge permit for Los Alamos National Laboratory that involves water pumped from an aquifer contaminated with highly toxic chromium.
The water is treated to remove contaminants and is then spread over the ground on lab property in an effort to decontaminate the aquifer or at least dilute the level of hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. The lab has been wrangling with how to clean up the massive plume of chromium for about a decade.
“Chromium is not just on [LANL] land; it’s on our land,” said Evelyn Naranjo of the nonprofit advocacy group Tewa Women United and a member of San Ildefonso Pueblo, which borders the plume to the south.
Naranjo, who said she has 23 grandchildren and nine greatgrandchildren, spoke partly in her Native language. “We are the power,” she said, drawing applause.
A coalition of organizations that include Tewa Women United had pushed for a public hearing on the state permit, issued in 2015, that allows the lab to dump some of the treated water on its property. The groups argue the state Environment Department approved the permit without sufficient public comment and that the permit is overbroad.
The coalition, Communities for Clean Water, also includes Honor Our Pueblo Existence, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, the New Mexico Acequia Association, and the Partnership for Earth and Spirituality.
The department’s Water Quality Control Commission denied the coalition’s request for a hearing three times. In December 2017, however, the New Mexico Court of Appeals ordered the department to move forward with the hearing, which was held at Los Alamos Magistrate Court.
Many of the people who testified Wednesday complained of a lack of transparency by the lab and the Environment Department, as well as potential health threats from contaminants.
An attorney representing a consortium awarded a $1.4 billion federal contract last year to clean up the chromium also testified, saying the discharge permit deals with narrow issues.
Santa Fe attorney Louis Rose, representing cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT, which had applied for the permit, said the company agrees to meet Environment Department standards. The hearing was not about about the remediation of the chromium plume, Rose said.
But most people who attended the hearing and gave testimony were primarily concerned about potential health effects and the prospect of the chromium plume one day reaching the Rio Grande.
Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen said the permit needs to be changed to include work plans with “more robust sampling” and reporting requirements to inform local governments, the public and media about progress in addressing the plume.
Hansen and other speakers said the permit should “require the most protective standards for public health for all potential contaminants” and that the pumped water dumped on lab property should contain less than 10 parts per billion of chromium — far less than the state standard.
No decision on the permit is expected for several months after the hearing, which will continue Thursday.