Watersheds & Canyon Investigations

LANL organizes its site investigation and remediation efforts according to the watersheds in which the sites are found. A watershed is composed of one or more mesas, all of the drainages from those mesas, and the major canyon into which the drainages converge.

Environmental specialists evaluate an entire watershed from a mesa top, through a canyon, to the Rio Grande in order to evaluate how contamination moves in sediments, surface water, soils, and groundwater throughout the watershed.

Remediation decisions are made by taking the entire watershed system into consideration. Project staff evaluate the amount of contaminants, the type of contamination, and public accessibility to the watershed and analyzes human health and ecological risks within the watershed. Staff use the evaluation results to prioritize its remediation efforts so the most contaminated and most publicly accessible sites are addressed first.

Each watershed presents unique challenges because of its location and topography and because of the clean-up solutions required by the types of hazardous chemical and/or radioactive wastes found in the watershed.