Work to Start on Capturing
Contaminated RunoffKRISTEN DAVENPORT
The New Mexican - 5/20/2000Workers will start digging ponds in canyons on Los Alamos National Laboratory property this weekend to capture and contain any hazardous waste and radioactive contamination that might wash off lab grounds and into the Rio Grande in the aftermath of the Cerro Grande fire.
Offering a tentative $85 million from the federal government for containment and cleanup, Sen. Jeff Bingaman toured the laboratory Friday - first by helicopter, then by bus - with a group of lab scientists, federal emergency officials and reporters to see the fire damage firsthand.
But lab officials say they're not waiting for the federal government to promise the money; they're getting started today on cleanup.
Five thousand to 8,000 acres of the lab's 43-square-mile property were burned in the Cerro Grande fire - some of those acres dangerously close to sensitive top-secret areas of the nuclear-weapons lab. The aerial tour showed entire hillsides and canyons scorched, acres of ponderosa skeletons, and grass fires that came within feet of buildings before being put out.
During the lab's 50 years of bomb-building, testing and the dumping of nuclear waste have dispersed huge quantities of depleted uranium and other radionuclides into surrounding soil and vegetation.
Watchdog groups say the lab has 1,500 nuclear and hazardous-waste dumping sites - many of them in canyons, and some in areas the fire swept over.
See entire article at http://www.sfnewmexican.com/localnews/index.las
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