CARLSBAD, N.M. – For some residents of southeastern New Mexico, 20 years is too long ago to remember. They have always seen trucks heading to EM’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).

For others, they will never forget the day two decades ago when a truck carrying waste to WIPP from DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory was lauded as the beginning of a new era.

Some were employees who had worked to see the facility open and begin its national mission. Others were area officials and business leaders who had worked tirelessly advocating for WIPP.

An estimated 500 people were onsite in the early morning hours of March 26, 1999. After a fog delay the prior day and hours of waiting, everyone was tired and cold. But that didn’t matter when, at about 3:30 a.m., the lights of the truck were spotted. Cheers and applause quickly broke out.

The noise level grew when the driver honked the horn in the vehicle trap and again when the truck drove onto the site. Flags were waved, hugs were shared, and tears flowed as area residents looked back to the beginnings of WIPP.

It was the early 1970s when Carlsbad community leaders began lobbying for a nuclear waste repository after state Sen. Joe Gant, Jr., saw a newspaper article about a proposed repository in the salt beds of Kansas. In the 1950s, the National Academy of Sciences had recommended salt deposits for the permanent disposal of radioactive waste, as salt would slowly encapsulate the waste, isolating it from the environment.

In Kansas, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission — the predecessor agency to DOE —abandoned plans due to extensive area drilling and political opposition. Meanwhile, Carlsbad was facing an economic downturn, with about 1,000 people out of work after the U.S. Borax potash mine closed. Gant talked to a friend, U.S. Rep. Harold Runnels of New Mexico, who liked the idea of looking at southeastern New Mexico’s salt beds for the project.

A large amount of data was available due to the local potash industry: extensive and thick beds of high quality salt sat at the right depth; the area was marked by low rainfall and population density; and much of it was owned by the U.S. government.

Area officials began to learn everything they could about the project to try to get it moved to southeastern New Mexico, including Carlsbad Mayor Walter Gerrells, Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce Executive Director (and later state senator) Louis Whitlock, and Carlsbad Department of Development Director Eddie Lyon.

While residents knew a lot about area mining operations, there was still a lot to learn about the proposed project. A valuable resource was Dr. Wendell Weart, the Sandia National Laboratories WIPP program manager, who directed WIPP site evaluation studies and became the go-to salt-waste interaction expert.

Carlsbad Citizens for Energy Development was formed, and residents traveled extensively, promoting the project and attending hundreds of hearings over many years at the federal and state levels, often finding themselves greatly outnumbered by project opponents.

Opposition to the project was strong in northern New Mexico. In the mid-1970s, a bill proposed in the state legislature to block WIPP was narrowly defeated by a House vote of 36-34.

In 1979, Congress authorized WIPP as a research and development facility to demonstrate the safe disposal of radioactive waste from defense activities not regulated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In 1981, DOE proceeded with construction, first drilling an exploratory shaft. In 1989, construction was completed, the same year the primary waste shipping container TRUPACT-II was certified.

But the road to opening WIPP would prove to be much longer than expected.

Over the years, strong support came from U.S. Rep. Joe Skeen and U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici at the federal level. On the state level, officials such as Rep. John Heaton and Sen. Don Kidd were vocal proponents, along with Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest.

A major battleground was the federal court system, including two lawsuits brought by the State of New Mexico. The first, in 1981, was settled by the Consultation and Cooperation Agreement, which allowed for increased communication, more studies, and addressing off-site concerns such as highway improvements.

A 1991 lawsuit brought by the state addressed the U.S. Interior Department’s withdrawal of land from public use for WIPP. The following year, a key milestone for WIPP was passage of the Land Withdrawal Act, which transferred jurisdiction of the land to the DOE. That act also required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to certify that WIPP had met all applicable federal radioactive waste disposal regulations. That certification was received in 1998.

The following year, a federal court decision paved the way for WIPP to open. Lawsuits by the state and several environmental groups had previously denied WIPP’s interim status under the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which would allow the facility to be treated as if it had received a state permit. In 1999, a federal judge ruled in favor of interim status. WIPP received its state hazardous waste permit later that year.

In the days immediately preceding the first shipment, there were three last-minute court appeals. All were rejected by judges in Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe.

In Santa Fe, dozens of protesters lined the route when the first truck headed for Carlsbad, and there were reports of two people who tried to block the road. The truck was escorted by state police, with law enforcement checkpoints and tactical team members at the site. In Carlsbad, it was predominately supporters who lined the route, and there were no protests at the site.

Twenty years later, more than 12,000 shipments have traveled to WIPP, without fanfare, from waste generator sites across the country. And deep beneath the desert, a national environmental problem continues to be solved, thanks to those who fought the long fight for WIPP.