WITH JONI ARENDS ***image1***You're the executive director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety but also one of its founders.
Can you give some background about your organization's start back in 1988?
CCNS formed in the spring of '88
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because of citizen concerns about the transportation of nuclear waste from
Los Alamos National Laboratory to the WIPP [the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad, New Mex.] site. At the time the plan was for the waste to travel down St. Francis Drive and pass seven elementary schools, pass the hospital and we raised many, many concerns about not only the transportation but the site itself.
The Department of Energy now wants to change the WIPP permit and allow for waste that has to be handled by machines?
Yes, and we are opposing remote-handled waste coming to WIPP for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons is because we're concerned about opening the door for high-level waste coming to WIPP. If the Yucca Mountain project does not move forward, and the project is looking less credible every day because of everything from the USGS data, the falsification of data, issues with funding, the state of Nevada filed a lawsuit [on March 22] and the tribal issues with regard to the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, for the Shoshone Tribes.
DOE is asking for $90 million for environmental cleanup for the next fiscal year, $55 million less than last year. When you go to DC this week to lobby, whom will you talk to and what will you say?
We'll be speaking with our congressional delegation, we'll be meeting with DOE headquarters and perhaps the California congressional delegation as well. After 2½ years of negotiations, DOE and the New Mexico Environment Department finally signed an agreement for cleanup at Los Alamos and we understood one of the purposes of that agreement was to ensure continuing stable funding for cleanup at Los Alamos.
Yesterday you sent me a rather extensive spreadsheet about chromium contamination in the wells that monitor pollution in the regional aquifer. Explain what this means in lay-person terms.
So, the wells we're talking about, the characterization well, that well was drilled to characterize the geology and the contaminants in that area. That well is surrounded by the five drinking water wells for Los Alamos County and the finding of Chromium 6 at such high levels, at four times the EPA standards for drinking water, is substantial. So although it's not in the drinking water wells, it's in the characterization well, it raises concerns. CCNS is saying is we need to turn off those drinking water wells and slowly turn them back on and pump them at the same time to see if the plume is moving in the direction of these water wells. I think it's important for people to recognize that DOE has had to replace drinking water systems or supply drinking water to communities. DOE has contaminated the rivers that flow through or run next to their major sites, such as the Columbia River for the Hanford Site, the Snake River for Idaho National Laboratory, the Savannah River of the Savannah River Site, the Clinch River for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We can't think that at Los Alamos we're immune.
Chromium 6 was the toxin in the Erin Brockovich movie?
Right, and in the earlier answer I would have said Chromium is the contaminant of concern in the Erin Brockovich movie where people are sick with cancer and bloody noses and skin problems and a variety of different things.
And this impacts Santa Fe how?
That's the real question because Los Alamos National Laboratory said a few years ago the contaminants would not reach the Buckman well field for millions of years, but since the city has drilled these new wells, the area of recharge for the Buckman well field has gotten larger and now extends to the west side of the river, which indicates the contaminants could be drawn into what they call a cone of depression. CCNS works with George Rice, a groundwater hydrologist, and George did an analysis of the movement of contaminants from Los Alamos to the river and he found, using LANL data, that from a discharge pipe in Mortandad Canyon to the Rio Grande, a distance of 8 miles, the contaminant could travel from the discharge pipe through the various groundwater systems and be discharged at the springs at the
Rio Grande in 26 years or less.
Should CCNS change its name to something like Worried Sick Citizens?
Every once in a while we talk about changing the name but there's so much community support for the organization we just keep going forward. Today's our 18th birthday.
Happy birthday. Does it feel like headway is being made or is it one step forward, two steps back?
We've been working collectively with a number of the groups in New Mexico for the last two or three years and I think we've made a lot of headway on these issues. I mean, some of the things we've accomplished include the movement of the special materials from TA 18. We played our part in terms of stopping the new bomb factory in New Mexico, the open burning of depleted uranium and high explosives. It's always this balance between what's happening in the world and what we can do here in Santa Fe. What we say is: CCNS works locally for global disarmament and we do what we can to contribute to the global effort.
