Los Alamos Warns the West Mesa: Stop the Next Perchlorate and Chromium Crisis

For over 25 years, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS) has fought to protect surface and groundwater from radioactive, toxic and hazardous contamination from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).  In 2004, that campaign expanded to contain the co-located perchlorate and chromium plume – contamination that migrated into the top of the 1,000 foot deep aquifer below LANL, Pueblo de San Ildefonso and the Española Basin Sole Source Drinking Water Aquifer.  https://www.epa.gov/dwssa/overview-drinking-water-sole-source-aquifer-program#What_Is_SSA Despite federal assurances and repeated promises of a solution, the plume remains unresolved.

That history should be a flashing red warning light for every Rio Rancho and Sandoval County resident now facing Project Ranger, a proposed hypersonic rocket motor and detonation facility approved without baseline science, transparency, or lawful process. https://www.castelion.com/news/castelion-announces-project-ranger/ The same patterns that delayed accountability at LANL are reappearing on the West Mesa—only this time the risks include perchlorate, hazardous propellants, explosive residues, and the wildfire threats of a high-hazard industrial site.

For more information, visit the informative website of Common Ground Rising. https://commongroundrising.org/  Its mission is to to educate, organize, and implement community grassroots committees to take action that protects our environment against the drivers of climate change, that impacts watershed, air, public health and safety.

Project Ranger Claims: “The site is 1,000 feet above groundwater.”  The project’s contractor, Ron Bohannon, has repeatedly used this statement with no scientific meaning to reassure residents.

Being “1,000 feet above groundwater” does not prevent contamination when dealing with PFAS, ammonium perchlorate, explosive waste, or chemical runoff. Decades of Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Department of Defense research show that perchlorate in arid soils migrates laterally, moving through shallow and intermediate aquifer layers—just as chromium migrated laterally from LANL into Pueblo lands.

And the most critical fact remains:  Project Ranger did not provide baseline groundwater, air, soil, or wildfire assessments before the City of Rio Rancho and Sandoval County approved Project Ranger.  One cannot declare minimal risk when the science investigation has been deliberately skipped.

We Cannot Repeat the Mistakes of Los Alamos. Once contamination begins, it moves, grows, and becomes exponentially more difficult to contain. CCNS’s decades-long struggle proves this. Project Ranger without scientific review is not national security; it is reckless public endangerment.

The Bottom Line.  Before a single rocket motor is mixed or a single detonation occurs, residents must demand full hydrology studies, wildfire analyses, contamination modeling, lawful public hearings, and independent citizen based oversight of Project Ranger.

New Mexico cannot afford another groundwater disaster.

1. Friday, November 21st from noon to 1 pm – Join the nuclear disarmament community at the intersection of East Alameda and Sandoval in Santa Fe for the weekly peaceful protest in support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Join with Veterans for Peace, CCNS, Nuclear Watch NM, Loretto Community, New Mexico Peace Fest, Pax Christi and others. Bring your flags, signs and banners.

2. Watch A House of Dynamite on Netflix. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published a resource guide to viewing “A House of Dynamite.”  https://thebulletin.org/2025/10/a-bulletin-resource-guide-to-viewing-a-house-of-dynamite/

3. Thursday, November 27^th from 10 am to 3 pm – Thanksgiving Potluck at the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, 202 Harvard Drive SE, Albuquerque at the intersection of Harvard and Silver. https://www.abqpeaceandjustice.org/events/at-the-center

4. Tuesday, December 2^nd at 7 pm at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos –An Evening With: The Nagasaki Hibakusha Friendship Association.  Chiyoko Motomura and Dr. Masao Tomonaga will speak about their childhood memories of the 1945 bombings, the lessons learned from those events and how to move forward in more constructive ways of peacemaking and diplomacy.  https://ladailypost.com/lanl-and-community-invited-to-attend-historic-talk-by-two-survivors-from-nagasaki-dec-2-at-fuller-lodge/

5. Saturday, December 13^th through Monday, December 15^th from 11 am to 3 pm – Site Santa Fe is hosting Exposure: Portraits at the Edge of the Nuclear

As part of the Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX), Diné artist Will Wilson invites participants with lived, inherited, or visionary relationships to nuclear culture—uranium mining, atomic testing, environmental cleanup, and speculative futures—for a portrait session using the historic wet plate collodion process.

Created on-site at SITE SANTA FE, these tintype portraits become a living archive of those who have been affected by, have resisted, or continue to dream through the legacy of nuclear colonialism. Wilson’s process foregrounds Indigenous visual sovereignty and ecological witnessing, positioning photography as a relational act and a tool for historical redress.

On the 13th and 14th they will have a discussion at 2pm where activists (including Terry on Sunday and Laura on Saturday) will discuss current nuclear affairs.  https://www.sitesantafe.org/en/events/exposure-portraits-at-the-edge-of-the-nuclear/

Tags: 000 foot deep aquifer, 1, ammonium perchlorate, CCNS, chemical runoff, chromium and perchlorate plume, Common Ground Rising, Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency, Española Basin Sole Source Drinking Water Aquifer, explosive residues, explosive waste, hazardous propellants, hypersonic rocket motor and detonation facility, LANL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, perchlorate, PFAS, Project Ranger, Pueblo de San Ildefonso, Rio Rancho, Ron Bohannon, Sandoval County, wildfire threats