June 10, 2021
Los Alamos National Laboratory would receive a $108 million increase for environmental cleanup under its proposed 2022 budget, a dramatic shift from Trump-era efforts to reduce cleanup money.
The newly released draft budget asks for about $334 million for the lab’s cleanup programs — up from this year’s $226 million — and would include removing Cold War legacy waste, demolishing at least one deserted structure and mitigating an underground chromium plume.
That’s in contrast to last year’s proposal by the Trump administration to cut the lab’s cleanup funding by $100 million. New Mexico’s delegates managed to restore the funding to the current amount in the final budget. …