Expert panel formed to advise on cleaning up LANL's toxic plume
Apr. 19—A 15-person independent panel will review efforts to clean up the toxic chromium plume that has lingered deep beneath Los Alamos National Laboratory for a half-century, with the aim of having the experts offer guidance on how to clear out the massive and stubborn groundwater pollution.
The recommendations aren't expected to come until next year.
In the meantime, state and federal officials, who put together the technical review committee, hope to move past the impasse, which has stalled the plume cleanup for a year, and resume the treatments to some degree.
Officials brought in outside experts to help resolve the dispute, with the hope they could provide more trained eyes to analyze the pollution, data and computer modeling and suggest methods for tackling the problem the agencies might not have considered.
"That is exactly why we're engaging with this committee," said John Rhoderick, director of the state Environment Department's Water Protection Division. "I've been very impressed, though, with the breadth of their expertise. It's a good committee to deal with this problem."
Since about 2018, the U.S. Energy Department's environmental teams have extracted tainted water, treated it and injected back into the 1 1/2 -mile-long plume.
Last year, state regulators ordered the operation halted, contending this approach pushed the contaminants toward San Ildefonso Pueblo and deeper into the aquifer.
But federal managers stood by the pump-and-treat method, saying it reduced the hexavalent chromium and kept it from spreading to the pueblo — and with the work halted, the contamination was rebounding.
Rhoderick said one thing both sides agree on is there are data gaps, such as how deep the plume is, and what are the best places to extract and inject.
They also agree it's vital to resume an effective cleanup as soon as possible, he said.
"We share the concerns about having the system down," Rhoderick said. "We're hoping that from out of this committee [we] come up with ... better-targeted solutions that will get us headed down the path to cleaning this up in a shorter period."
Residents, community advocates and conservationists have expressed concerns about the slow progress, saying the contaminants pose a health and environmental threat.
Hexavalent chromium is a known carcinogen that, when ingested in drinking water, can harm the liver, kidneys, reproductive systems and, some research suggests, cause stomach cancer if consumed over a lengthy period.
Between 1957 and 1972, lab workers dumped water from an old power plant's cooling towers into Sandia Canyon — water that had been funneled through steel pipes laced with hexavalent chromium to prevent corrosion.
From there, the water traveled several miles to Mortandad Canyon and pooled about 1,000 feet underground in a huge plume the lab discovered in 2005.
Leading the expert review committee will be Ines Triay, the interim dean of Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering. She's also a former assistant secretary of the Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management.
The panel's experts come from academia, national laboratories and industry, with backgrounds in geology, hydrology, geochemistry, drilling, regulatory oversight, computer modeling and migrating contaminants, Triay said.
"Their expertise is far, wide," Triay said.
Triay read a long list of questions the panel will address, such as whether the current computer modeling results are defensible, whether data gaps are impairing regulators' and project managers' decisions, and the teams' recommendations for relocating injection wells.
Enlisting the aid of experts is the latest measure the agencies are taking to rid the lab of the perennial plume.
Officials have crafted a plan to increase treatments. That would include adding up to 15 injection wells, 15 monitoring wells and 30 piezometers that measure groundwater pressure.
A 10,000-square-foot treatment plant, access roads and underground pipes also might be installed.
