Los Alamos Wildfire

• Author: Environmental Law Institute
• Pages: 14-15

14 NEPA Success Stories

A benet of the NEPA process is that it informs

agency decisionmaking. Often, this occurs by an

agency receiving comments not only from the public

but also from other governmental agencies. is case

is an example of how inter-agency comments helped

the Department of Energy respond to an emergency

situation.

When the Department of Energy (DOE) issued its

draft site-wide EIS (DEIS) for the Los Alamos Na-

tional Laboratory (LANL) in 1998, wildre was not

identied as a plausible risk in its accident scenarios.

However, at a public hearing for the DEIS, a U.S.

Forest Service forester on the nearby Santa Fe Na-

tional Forest urged the DOE to consider wildre in

its post-DEIS analysis. A written comment from the

Department of Interior similarly urged consideration

of a wildre. Both commenters referred to a recent

Forest Service report about the threat of wildre.

rough evaluating the inter-agency comments on

the DEIS, DOE recognized that wildre was not

only plausible, but likely. DOE estimated in its nal

EIS (FEIS) that such a re would likely occur once

in ten years and that the possibility of a re war-

ranted careful analysis.

In the FEIS, DOE included an accident scenario

of an extensive wildre initiating southwest of the

LANL near its border with the Bandelier National

Monument. e September 1999 FEIS Record

of Decision committed to develop, by December

1999, a plan for comprehensive wildre mitigation,

including construction and maintenance of strategic

re roads and re breaks, creation of defensive space

around key facilities, and forest management to

reduce fuel loadings. e October 1999 Mitigation

Action Plan stated that the LANL was already taking

steps to reduce hazards of a wildre, such as cutting

some trees and replacing wooden pallets on which

waste drums were stacked with aluminum.

Less than one year after the FEIS, in May 2000, a

prescribed re ignited by the National Park Service

in Bandelier National Monument broke out of

control, burning 50,000 acres of forest and resi-

dential land and 7,650 acres (approximately 30%)

of the LANL site. e “Cerro Grande Fire” closely

mirrored the FEIS accident scenario that DOE had

already analyzed. e severity of the Cerro Grande

Fire impacts were reduced within the LANL bound-

aries because DOE was able to immediately imple-

ment steps that had been outlined in the FEIS to

reduce the re impacts. Additionally, the DOE relied

on the FEIS analysis to answer public inquiries and

concerns during the re, and the analyses in the

site-wide EIS proved useful in planning recovery

programs.

In the wake of the May 2000 re, DOE for only the

third time in its history invoked a NEPA provi-

sion that allows an agency in consultation with the

Council on Environmental Quality to take actions

without preparing an EIS if emergency conditions

exist. One of the immediate post-re emergency

actions taken at LANL was to construct a 70-foot-

high water retention structure in Pajarito Canyon

to protect the LANL nuclear facilities and down-

stream communities from rainstorm ooding. Other

emergency actions included the immediate removal

of contaminated soils from canyon reaches to reduce

possible contaminant transport during storm events.

Ultimately, DOE undertook the preparation of a

Special Environmental Assessment for the emergency

actions it implemented at LANL and continued to

provide for public involvement by soliciting public

comment on the Notice of Emergency Action and

on monitoring results and prospective mitigation.

Because of NEPA, DOE was able to meet the chal-

lenges the Cerro Grande Fire presented in a timely,

informed manner. Without the inter-agency com-

ments DOE received during the draft EIS stage,

DOE may have not had the foresight to consider

LOS ALAMO S WILDFIRE

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTER-AGENCY COMMENTS