Public Forum Set to Address Hexavalent Chromium Plume Near LANL

A public forum held March 9 in Pojoaque brought together federal officials and cleanup contractors to answer community questions about hexavalent chromium contamination linked to decades-old operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a plume that remediation experts have managed since 2004 with results that critics describe as strikingly limited.

The Department of Energy Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office, known as EM-LA, and its legacy cleanup contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos, LLC (N3B) hosted the two-hour event at the Tribal Room at 10 Cities of Gold Rd # A in Santa Fe (Pojoaque). The forum opened at 5:00 p.m. with a presentation on the hexavalent chromium plume followed by public Q&A, a portion made available simultaneously via Microsoft Teams. For the second half of the meeting, in-person attendees could move directly into conversation with N3B subject matter experts on two specific topics: the Hexavalent Chromium Campaign and the Legacy Waste Program. N3B described the evening as "piloting a new format for active participation and interaction."

The contamination traces to a non-nuclear power plant at LANL that flushed coolant water containing potassium dichromate from its cooling towers into Sandia Canyon from 1956 to 1972. Potassium dichromate was a permitted descaling agent used in power plants widely during that era, and EM-LA states that up to 160,000 pounds of hexavalent chromium were released from those towers, with a portion migrating into the regional aquifer beneath Mortandad and Sandia Canyons. EM-LA designates that plume its top environmental remediation project.

The scale of the contamination against the pace of cleanup has drawn scrutiny. According to a presentation delivered to the Board of Public Utilities on April 16, 2025, the Chromium Interim Measures system has removed roughly 2,000 pounds of the 160,000 pounds discharged, approximately one percent of the total. The blunt assessment from one commentator, identified as Shelton, captured the situation concisely: "They're interim for a reason."

EM-LA has worked collaboratively with the New Mexico Environment Department since 2004 to install a network of monitoring wells and a water treatment system. In March 2024, EM-LA and NMED convened a technical review team drawing on experts from the Network of National Laboratories for Environmental Management and Stewardship, industry, academia, and EPA Region 6 to address differing professional opinions between the two agencies. Partial operation of the Chromium Interim Measures system resumed on September 30, 2024, before the review team formally issued its findings. That report, titled "Independent Review of the Chromium Interim Measures Remediation System in Mortandad Canyon Los Alamos, New Mexico," was released in December 2024.

EM-LA states it "continues to proactively assess, monitor, and collaborate" with NMED, the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer, Pueblo de San Ildefonso, and Los Alamos County on the remediation effort. A point of recurring public confusion concerns who bears responsibility for the cleanup: EM-LA directs remediation of legacy contamination from Laboratory operations before 1999, and N3B performs the work under contract. Neither LANL itself nor its current primary contractor, Triad, is involved in addressing legacy contamination.