New Mexico orders more testing before LANL hazardous waste permit approval

New Mexico regulators have put Los Alamos National Laboratory’s hazardous waste permit renewal on hold until the lab and its contractors answer sharper questions about PFAS, open burn and open detonation activity, and the amount of explosive waste being treated at the site. The New Mexico Environment Department issued a Notice of Disapproval on June 8 and gave the U.S. Department of Energy 120 calendar days to file a revised application.

For Los Alamos County, the stakes run beyond paperwork. The permit governs storage and treatment of hazardous waste, closure and post-closure care at TA-54 Areas G, H and L, and corrective action for contamination across the lab site. If the state’s demands hold, residents will get a permit with clearer PFAS rules, tighter monitoring and stronger tracking of waste handling. If the state eases up, the next permit could leave more of those questions unresolved.

The renewal process began June 26, 2020, when DOE submitted the application. NMED found it administratively incomplete on March 23, 2021, and again on Jan. 25, 2022, then spent the next several years pushing for revisions on alternative treatment technologies and other issues. The department directed DOE to submit a revised application by May 14, 2025, then extended that deadline to July 11, 2025 after DOE said it wanted to add a corrective-action-complete petition to the package.

By the time NMED finished its technical review in June 2026, the state said the revised application still had significant deficiencies. One of the biggest was PFAS, a new issue in the permit review because of New Mexico legislation that took effect in June 2025. NMED ordered DOE, Triad National Security, LLC, and Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos, LLC to add PFAS definitions, sampling requirements, cleanup standards and monitoring provisions throughout the application, and to evaluate PFAS at places where firefighting foams containing fluorinated compounds may have been used.

The state also demanded more detail on LANL’s open burn/open detonation operations. NMED asked for additional information on the quantities of explosive waste treated, including net explosive weight measurements, and required new soil sampling at treatment areas where activity occurred after the last testing cycle in 2018. Regulators also want more information on whether alternative treatment technologies could actually be scaled to LANL’s waste stream.

NMED first issued the hazardous waste facility permit to LANL on Nov. 8, 1989, and renewed it in 2010. The current fight shows how much has changed since then, with PFAS, legacy waste and explosive-treatment oversight now sitting at the center of the review. DOE can keep operating while it responds, but the state’s message is clear: the next permit will have to tell Los Alamos County more about what is in the waste, where it has gone and how the lab plans to contain it.