As we stated in our March 20th letter to the LANL environmental programs director, LANL's history of obfuscating their responsibilities and the many recent violations of the NMED/LANL Consent Order indicates that they cannot be trusted to protect regional drinking water supplies or maintain the schedule set out by NMED in the Consent Order. An independent review of the wells and groundwater data is needed.

In the meantime, while NMED and LANL are addressing the well evaluations for R-20, R-22, R-25 and R-32 as required by NMED's letter and in order to protect public health, CCNS recommends that monthly sampling of the regional drinking water wells, using sensitive contaminant detection sampling and analysis methods, be done.

Further, we are concerned that the Department of Energy (DOE) has not requested adequate funding to complete the requirements under the Consent Order, let alone the new tasks set out in the April 5 NMED letter. Remedying LANL's past mistakes will require additional funding and there must be thorough Congressional oversight on how that funding is spent.

The implications of the unreliable water quality data from the characterization wells and from the old LANL test wells installed over 50 years ago are far reaching. DOE has used the unrepresentative data from these wells in documents and reports, such as the 1999 LANL Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS), the 2006 draft SWEIS and the annual Environmental Surveillance Reports. These reports are being used to determine future operations at LANL, such as expanded plutonium pit production. DOE must rescind reports reliant upon faulty data and re-issue them once representative data has been collected. Our request has implications for the release of the final LANL SWEIS next month.

Click here to read the NMED April 5, 2007 orders to LANL.

Click here to learn more about CCNS technical concerns regarding new NMED orders.

Click here to learn about LANL contamination in Los Alamos County and Santa Fe drinking water.