By KRWG News
New Mexico – New Mexico's environmental secretary wants the National Nuclear Security Administration removed from environmental cleanup and surveillance programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Ron Curry says the National Nuclear Security Administration has had a "troubled history" in implementing a 2005 consent decree over cleanup.
He wrote Energy Secretary Steven Chu that the agency's involvement "has compromised the pace and direction" of work to protect the New Mexico's water resources and its citizens' health.
Curry wants cleanup issues left to the Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management both for the consent decree with the state and a natural resources damage assessment sought this month by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Resource Trustee Council.
NNSA says it has an Environmental Project Office with the same support and priority as other NNSA work.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.