In January, the first gallons of river water from the Rio Grande will be diverted through the new $216.3 million joint city and county project, treated, commingled with other waters and sent through a pipe to customers' taps.

A 317-page draft technical report by two companies skilled in analyzing water quality and health risks of nuclear-weapons materials is supposed to answer the fundamental question: Is that water from the Buckman Direct Diversion project safe to drink in the short term and the long term, since it is downstream from Los Alamos National Laboratory waste sites?

The two companies — ChemRisk and AMEC Earth and Environmental — were hired by the Buckman Direct Diversion Board to conduct the analysis.

In the short run, and during normal flows of the Rio Grande, the answer to whether the water is safe to drink seems to be yes, based on the extensive analysis by ChemRisk and a review by an independent engineer.

The levels of LANL contaminants entering the Rio Grande during storm events and spring runoff aren't as well known because of insufficient data.

If lab pollutants such as plutonium and uranium wash into the river during a flood, the Buckman Direct Diversion is designed to handle the contaminants with a state-of-the-art treatment system and a backup early-warning system that allows the project's operators to stop pumping from the river at a moment's notice, according to city and project officials.

Larger issues not answered in the ChemRisk report are how fast lab-generated contaminants are spreading through groundwater beneath the lab, how long before they reach the Rio Grande and whether they will pollute the city's Buckman wells in the years to come.

Reviewers weigh in on report

Michael A. Crawford is a professional engineer not connected to the Buckman project who owned a company in Maine and spent 35 years evaluating hazardous materials and designing water-treatment facilities for municipalities and industries. He said ChemRisk did a good job of analyzing existing water-quality data and simplifying it in an executive summary.

Still, Crawford says the report overestimates the health risks of some contaminants, such as arsenic, in the raw river water. While that's not unusual in a risk assessment, he thinks in this case it will come back to haunt the Buckman Direct Diversion project.

"Arsenic represents 65 percent of the cumulative risks of drinking (untreated) Rio Grande water," he said. "My concern is people will read the report and not understand how conservative (the analysis) is."

In addition, Crawford thinks the report doesn't do a good job of analyzing the potential ongoing risk of water contamination from LANL.

Two watchdog groups, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety and Healthy Waters NOW ASAP, along with geologist Robert H. Gilkeson, a former LANL consultant, agree with Crawford on the last point.

In addition, they point to several critical contradictions between the report summary and the full technical report. They suggest that the Buckman Direct Diversion Board should give ChemRisk time to resolve the contradictions before presenting a final report, if officials want the public to trust the water system.

ChemRisk is answering questions and presenting the report to the public Tuesday at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center.

Reasons for worry about water quality?

The Buckman diversion point is 3.3 miles below a spot where a canyon once used as a Los Alamos National Laboratory waste dump empties into the Rio Grande. A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report identified 40 "high-priority" dump sites in Los Alamos and Pueblo canyons that can discharge contaminants into the Rio Grande during floods.

On Nov. 1, LANL received a storm-water discharge permit from the state Environment Department to continue letting water flow across dozens of lab waste sites and through canyons to the Rio Grande.

In addition, the Buckman river diversion point is downstream from a Superfund site in Española.

The Buckman project was designed with these contaminant sources in mind. Advanced water treatment was added to the design after an earlier report analyzed the water quality in the river.

Public concerns prompted the Buckman Direct Diversion Board to ask LANL and the U.S. Department of Energy for six additional actions to ensure the lab was monitoring and mitigating the dangers of contaminants floating downstream.

Removing contaminants

The Buckman Direct Diversion board asked ChemRisk to only analyze the risk to consumer health if 95 percent of uranium, plutonium and Americium were removed by the treatment plant. All three are contaminants associated with lab waste. Some forms of uranium also leach naturally into groundwater around Santa Fe.

Matt Le, a ChemRisk spokesman, said when the levels of contaminants in water are uncertain, risk assessments "will tend to overestimate risks rather than underestimate them."

"We also assumed that a person would live in Santa Fe for 70 years and that the BDD would supply every drop of water they consumed during that time (averaged at 2 liters per day). Again, this is unrealistic," Le said. "All of these conservative assumptions produce estimated risks that are overstated by a large margin and that is why we are comfortable saying there will be no risk to consumers."

ChemRisk analyzed the increased cancer risks both before and after the water had been treated by the Buckman Direct Diversion project. For men drinking treated water, the estimated increased risk (over 70 years) from radionuclides was 1.76 cases for every 10,000 men. That's an increase considered acceptable by the U.S. EPA, but not by groups such as the Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety.

Early-warning system

A key and unique feature of the river-diversion project is an early-warning system that will allow the operators to shut off flows from the river during storm-water and flood events.

After the Cerro Grande Fire scorched the mountain around Los Alamos, the number and severity of floods increased for several years.

A flow of 5 cubic feet per second coming down Los Alamos Canyon will trigger the early-warning system. Rick Carpenter, river-diversion project manager, said the lab also will be taking water samples during floods to continue monitoring for contaminants.

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