Water Quality
Answers to Some of Your Water Quality Questions
About the Buckman Direct Diversion Project
1. Why does our region need the Buckman Direct Diversion (BDD) Project?
The City is pumping too much water from regional groundwater wells, potentially damaging the underground aquifer that is their source and reducing flows in the Rio Tesuque, Rio Pojoaque, and La Cienega springs. Groundwater pumping at current levels cannot be sustained. Meanwhile, the City of Santa Fe’s Santa Fe River reservoirs can only supply about half of the region’s drinking water needs in the best of years. Our planning assumes the Santa Fe River reservoirs will provide little or no water in future dry years, similar to our recent experience in 2002 when Santa Fe River reservoirs provided very little water and we had to enact emergency water use restrictions that we can avoid in the future due to water availability from the BDD.
2. Why does the Santa Fe region need the BDD project now?
? The City of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County do not have enough drinking water right now. The supply we do have could be dramatically reduced by circumstances we cannot control — such as a prolonged drought or a fire in the watershed. The longer we wait, the less certain we are of maintaining a reliable supply of drinking water under all conditions.
3. What other sustainable drinking water alternatives have been studied?
Many alternatives have been considered, but the BDD project is the best choice as an additional source of drinking water for the Santa Fe region in the near-term for three main reasons: 1) the City and County already own significant quantities of imported San Juan-Chama Project water that is available for diversion only from the Rio Grande; 2) diversion from the Rio Grande at alternate locations as evaluated in the BDD Environmental Impact Statement would be more difficult or impossible; and 3) the Rio Grande is the only source of renewable water in the vicinity of the Santa Fe region.
4. How will the BDD project divert and treat the surface water to ensure it does not contain unsafe levels of radionuclide contaminants?
The untreated water in the river is already cleaner than federal safe drinking water standards for the levels of contaminants it contains of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) origin, including radionuclides. Once in a while, occasional snow melt runoff and storm water runoff that flows from LANL property to the Rio Grande may contain small amounts of LANL-origin contaminants. The water treatment process selected will ensure that the water produced by the BDD meets all state and federal drinking water standards. The process uses the best available technology for treating surface water to remove all kinds of things, including radionuclides. The BDD Board is working with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) and LANL to put in place an early warning system that will automatically stop diversions containing such flows from the river to the treatment plant. On-site operators would also receive instant notification by cell phone that the facility needs to temporarily stop diversions as an added layer of security.
5. How will the BDD test and monitor the water to show that it is safe to deliver to customers?
The BDD will frequently monitor and test its untreated and treated water to ensure the treated water meets all drinking water standards. The BDD has voluntarily committed to testing the water as frequently as needed and plans to post all test results promptly on its project website (www.bddproject.org) and/or in other appropriate places.
6. How will the BDD ensure that construction of its diversion facility does not disturb the nearby abandoned Rio Grande channel, which has low levels of buried LANL-origin contaminants?
A 2008 study by the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) and BDD staff verifies that the construction of the BDD will not disturb the LANL-origin radionuclide contamination that was deposited in the now-abandoned river channel by the 1950s and 1960s floods.
The study focused on an abandoned channel of the Rio Grande that is located upstream of the BDD river diversion site. Floods in the 1950s and 1960s filled this former river channel with sediments that included LANL-origin contaminants. The concentrations of these contaminants are low, but above background levels. The entire area was later buried with cleaner sediments.
This abandoned channel has been extensively studied. In its May 2007 report, the NMED concluded these radioactive contaminants pose no immediate health threats and are too low to trigger a clean-up or more extensive assessment. In 2008, the NMED and BDD project staff completed additional testing of the soil in this area by taking samples from 11 cores near the diversion facility site and pipeline route, which are downstream from the abandoned channel. The cores were analyzed for legacy contaminants, including radionuclides. NMED and BDD project staff did not find elevated levels of any radionuclides, including plutonium, in samples within the construction site. All radionuclide measurements were non-detectable or lower than background levels except for samples from one bore hole used to identify the southern extent of the abandoned channel.
7. How will the BDD work with NMED, LANL and the EPA to ensure that LANL continues to take steps toward minimizing the risk to BDD facilities and the Rio Grande water diverted and treated by the BDD from exposure to radionuclides?
The BDD is working with LANL on six requested action steps. One action step was completed subsequently by the BDD Board with substantial assistance from NMED: Action step #3 called for LANL to measure the radionuclides in buried sediments in the slough near where the BDD facilities are to be built and help the BDD determine if minor realignment of project facilities could avoid these areas but LANL’s initial plan was not acceptable and the BDD Board made other arrangements for the necessary drilling and laboratory analyses.
Five action steps remain, including 1) Stop migration of LANL contaminants to the Rio Grande and groundwater through the construction of additional sediment barrier and containment systems, improved waste treatment and disposal practices, and stabilization and clean-up of sediment beds and banks in the Rio Grande tributary canyons that have received LANL waste discharges; 2) properly monitor the transport of legacy radionuclides (contaminants from the 1940s-1960s) in both the surface water and groundwater flow systems; 4) provide an early warning system so the BDD can temporarily stop diversions of any water from the Rio Grande when it is expected to contain elevated levels of contaminants of LANL origin; 5) monitor the mass of any LANL-origin radionuclides diverted with BDD raw water supplies and account for that mass in water treatment plant residuals and treated drinking water; and 6) provide funding for the BDD Board to retain independent peer review by qualified persons with regard to matters of LANL-origin radionuclides in the public drinking water resources of Santa Fe County and the City of Santa Fe.
The BDD Board and staff will continue working with all local, state and federal agencies on these issues throughout construction and operation of the BDD project. LANL has responded and has pledged its support for the BDD Project and its cooperation. LANL and BDD staff are meeting regularly to plan and negotiate on the remaining five requested action steps.