Managers of a joint Santa Fe city and county river diversion project are frustrated with construction delays on gauges designed to provide an early warning of upstream floods that could carry contaminants from Los Alamos National Laboratory into the Rio Grande.

"We are less than pleased with recent progress," said Rick Carpenter, project manager for the Buckman Direct Diversion. "We thought via verbal agreements that the gauges would already be in place. Our communication in recent months seem to have broken down."

The Buckman Direct Diversion project is 60 percent complete, Carpenter said. Water managers thought they would be able to test the gauges, which will operate by remote telemetry, before the project was finished.

Three gauges already exist, but they are designed to collect water samples for the lab to test and not to send real-time data on floods to remote computers. Those gauges will be redesigned and rebuilt to meet the needs of the river diversion project, said Danny Katzman, who manages the lab's surface-water projects.

Katzman, who has met with project officials over the last two years, said he made no promises when the gauges would be finished. He had hoped the reconstruction of the most critical one — E110, located just off N.M. 502 and less than a mile west of the Rio Grande on San Ildefonso land — would be finished by now and lacking only the upgraded telemetry system and a video camera.

Last week, a crew found a buried gas line in the area where the gauge was going to be built, Katzman said. If it has to be moved farther up the canyon, the lab will have to seek new permission from San Ildefonso Pueblo.

Stormwater runoff from the canyons has contained plutonium and other radionuclides in tests conducted more than a year ago.

The Buckman Direct Diversion board, made up of representatives from the city and county, asked Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2007 to agree on six actions to prevent, monitor and measure contaminated sediment that might wash down the canyons below the lab into the Rio Grande. Neither the lab, the U.S. Department of Energy nor the National Nuclear Security Administration have signed an agreement with the Buckman board, but some of the work is under way or completed.

In an Oct. 8 letter to the federal agencies, Buckman project officials expressed frustration with the delays and lack of communication. Lab officials say they're working on it. "We've focused a lot of effort on reducing sediment flow," George Rael, assistant manager for environmental operations at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos Site Office, said in a statement. "We're committed to the success of the diversion project."

According to recent interviews and a Sept. 22 update from Buckman project consultant Norm Gaume, here is where things stand now on the six actions:

1. Stop migration of LANL contaminants to the Rio Grande: In progress

Grizzly-size steel gauge cages and a pile of football-size white stones in Pueblo Canyon will soon be stacked up to 8 feet high across the canyon's bottom just west of N.M. 502 and the exit to White Rock. The weir will anchor wetlands that Katzman's crew has worked on for a year and a half. Workers planted 10,000 willows farther up the canyon, and wild reed grasses have filled downstream. "The weir will control the grade of the stream channel and the wetlands will control the sediment," Katzman said. "The wetland is the thing doing the work."

A similar weir will be constructed in DP Canyon, a tributary to Los Alamos Canyon.

2. Provide an early notification system — the gauges — so the Buckman Direct Diversion can temporarily stop diversion of Rio Grande flows when the river is expected to contain elevated levels of contaminants: In progress

Katzman said an existing gauge in Pueblo Canyon will have to be rebuilt below the new weir after that project is completed. A gauge in Los Alamos Canyon will be reconstructed below the new DP Canyon weir. Those two gauges and the E110 gauge, closest to the Rio Grande, will serve as the early notification system for Buckman and also monitor contaminants in collected water samples.

The system needed at all three gauges will send real-time data via a telemetry signal bounced off Tesuque Peak to Buckman operations. But LANL must also be able to retrieve the data, Katzman said. He said did not know when the telemetry system would be ready for the diversion project to test.

3. Monitor the transport of contaminants in surface water and groundwater flows: In progress

LANL undertook voluntary sampling for contaminants at the Otowi Bridge, upstream from the Buckman project. The New Mexico Environment Department sampled Rio Grande water near the canyons during the summer after storms. None of the samples collected had levels of radionuclides that would prompt further testing.

4. Measure radioactive and toxic contamination of buried sediment upstream from the river diversion site: Finished

The Buckman project and the state Environment Department contracted with drillers to take core samples 15 feet into the sediment. The core samples showed contaminant levels were too low to cause concern.

5. Monitor LANL contaminants in Buckman diversions, sand return and drinking water: In negotiation

6. Provide funding to hire an independent peer review of data regarding LANL-originated contamination of public drinking water resources in Santa Fe County and city: In progress

The Buckman board last week approved a federally funded $200,000 contract with ChemRisk to review existing data and to report to area residents about any potential contaminants in their drinking water. ChemRisk, based in San Francisco, has reviewed Los Alamos data for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1999. ChemRisk will partner with AMEC Earth and Environmental, which specializes in hydrology and geochemistry of New Mexico.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.