Top environment officials and the leaders of some northern New Mexico communities are in Washington, D.C., this week to discuss cleanup efforts at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The trip was organized by a coalition of communities. Organizers say the focus is on growing federal investment in environmental cleanup.
The Regional Coalition of LANL Communities wants to ensure that fines levied by the state are paid by the U.S. Energy Department and not taken out of the lab's cleanup budget.
A container of waste shipped from the lab to an underground nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico ruptured last February. Twenty-two workers were contaminated and the repository was forced to close indefinitely.
Just last week, investigators completed a project to get high-resolution images of the area around the breached container.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.