Water Quality
Who regulates LANL
The BDD Project has no regulation oversight authority on LANL compliance. The BDD Project appreciates and relies on the New Mexico Environment Department’s (NMED’s) oversight of LANL and its regulation authority, including consent order requirements that LANL construct structures to reduce erosion and transport sediment during storm events. The BDD Project is advocating for additional actions by the regulators and will continue to seek LANL improvements.
The BDD Project is committed to ensuring a safe and sustainable surface water supply from the Rio Grande for the Santa Fe community. It has taken numerous steps in this regard. However, the BDD Board must rely on persuading federal and state officials to do the right things and seeing that they meet legal requirements.
New Mexico Environment Department
In contrast, the NMED has several different regulatory and oversight roles that will assure that BDD water meets all standards. NMED is responsible for enforcing BDD Project compliance with safe drinking water standards. NMED also has the authority and responsibility to assess whether or not the State of New Mexico should adopt more stringent or additional safe drinking water standards to address LANL origin contamination.
NMED plays a major role in setting water quality standards for the Rio Grande, measuring the river for hundreds of potential contaminants and setting and enforcing wastewater discharge limits so that river water quality remains high. The agency also has regulatory and oversight roles related to LANL waste disposal, waste discharges, waste leakage and contaminated storm water runoff.
Together with the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission (NMWQCC), NMED sets detailed water quality standards for rivers, streams and groundwater and enforces those standards with the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Enforcement involves limiting the amounts of contaminants allowed in each wastewater effluent discharge. NMED also seeks to decrease contamination from storm runoff and other different sources.
BDD Project drinking water will be better than required by all applicable safe drinking water standards. The BDD Board and Staff will be accountable to federal and state regulators and to customers regarding BDD drinking water quality.
Preventing LANL Contamination from Storm Runoff
As part of its periodic review of surface water uses and the water quality standards needed to protect those uses, NMED’s Surface Water Quality Bureau has adopted more stringent water quality standards for the Rio Grande at Buckman. These standards address several LANL contaminants carried in storm water runoff. The BDD Project supports these proposed changes.
NMED also enforces compliance with wastewater discharge requirements into rivers or groundwater and has negotiated a consent order that addresses LANL-origin contamination. The consent order recently was modified to include a requirement for LANL to build stream bed structures in Los Alamos Canyon and its tributaries to stabilize sediments that contain legacy contaminants and slow their erosion and movement downstream during storm events.
– Ron Curry
NMED Cabinet Secretary
NMED includes a bureau dedicated to oversight of the environmental protection programs of federal nuclear laboratories and facilities in New Mexico, including LANL. Called the DOE Oversight Bureau, it is funded by a federal grant. The DOE Oversight Bureau has helped the BDD project confirm that its facilities next to the Rio Grande will be constructed in sediments that are free from LANL legacy contaminants.
NMED Cabinet Secretary Ron Curry recently said, “We will continue to aggressively monitor the area and require LANL to reduce the flow of storm water into the diversion to ensure Santa Fe’s future drinking water supply is safe.”
New Storm Water Consent Order/Standards
Notable regulatory progress has already occurred in 2009 that will help achieve the BDD Project’s goal of preventing and properly monitoring migration of LANL contaminants to the Rio Grande.
The EPA issued an NPDES permit to DOE/LANL requiring control of contamination and monitoring of LANL storm water runoff. This is the first permit of its kind. The NMED recently required LANL to reduce migration of contaminated sediment down Los Alamos and Pueblo Canyons to the Rio Grande and improve monitoring.
Separately, the NMED issued explicit new mandates to reduce storm water transport of contaminated sediments from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) down Los Alamos Canyon to the Rio Grande.
The EPA released a final regulatory decision requiring the DOE to rapidly
implement specific “best management practices” at
more than 140 LANL waste sites in Los Alamos Canyon and its tributaries,
and hundreds more waste sites throughout LANL to prevent storm water erosion
and carrying of contaminated sediment to the Rio Grande.
Los Alamos Canyon is the only canyon that drains directly from LANL property
to the Rio Grande upstream of the Buckman Direct Diversion (BDD) site.
The EPA permit contains an extensive list of best management practices and classifications of contaminants that DOE must monitor. The EPA permit also sets stringent “target action levels” for those contaminants. DOE will be required to take additional preventive measures wherever these target action levels are exceeded.
Contaminant transport in Los Alamos Canyon and its tributaries has been studied extensively. NMED determined that further work is needed to reduce storm water transport of contaminated sediments and consequently ordered LANL to construct sediment migration barriers, willow plantings and stream erosion control structures in Los Alamos Canyon and its tributaries. The specific requirements were in negotiation between LANL and NMED throughout 2008. LANL and NMED have agreed on a stringent timeline to complete eight action items, implement detailed monitoring requirements, meet deadlines for completion of design and construction, and finish in 2010. The completion deadline is well in advance of start-up of BDD operations. These actions by the regulators and LANL complement the many steps already taken by the BDD to ensure a safe and successful project.
These federal and state environmental regulatory mandates will help achieve two of the six action steps that the BDD Board requested LANL to implement in 2007, specifically to stop and monitor the migration of LANL contaminants to the Rio Grande. The BDD Project appreciates and relies on DOE and LANL to be a good neighbor, and on federal and state regulation authority, including these new regulations.
The BDD Project also appreciates significant efforts made by the EPA, NMED and LANL and will continue to work with them to address the Board’s desire to prevent migration and ensure proper monitoring of LANL contaminants in storm water that reaches the Rio Grande.
Oversight of Water Treatment Sediment and Sludge in Landfills
In addition to regulating storm water runoff, the NMED sets limits and conditions for disposal of water treatment sediment and sludge in landfills and enforces those limits and conditions. The agency specifies operating constraints for waste management activities. In large part, solid waste permits are intended to protect groundwater quality. Landfills must have a permit to accept wastes such as sludge from water treatment processes. NMED sets and enforces limits and conditions for disposal of water treatment sediment and sludge in landfills. The BDD will dispose of water treatment waste only at appropriately permitted landfills and only after acceptable waste criteria and monitoring are met.
For More Information:
NMED oversight
of LANL
Drinking water
standards