Los Alamos National Laboratory is reporting millions of dollars in damages to environmental monitoring stations around the property due to recent heavy rain and flooding.
The lab's program director for environmental corrective actions, Dave McInroy, says last week's rain was epic. More than 7 inches fell in a four-day period.
McInroy said during a briefing Friday the floods that washed through the canyons on lab property damaged three-quarters of the canyon access roads.
The flooding also wiped out a number of the lab's automated stormwater samplers and eroded into monitoring wells and other infrastructure.
Officials say the force of the water bent steel and broke chains that had been anchoring the samplers to concrete.
Although a large amount of sediment moved down the canyons, McInroy says risk to the environment or people is extremely low.
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