LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – EM’s Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) and contractor Los Alamos National Security (LANS) have begun removing contaminated soil along the steep south-facing slopes of Los Alamos Canyon adjacent to the Los Alamos Townsite.
Office of Environmental Management
May 31, 2017
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The project team use a crane to position crews and a spider excavator to remove soil on difficult terrain.
The project team conducts routine safety briefings before daily field work.
Workers securely rigged the spider excavator before the crane hoisted it onto the steep canyon slope.
The crew is transported to and from the cleanup site in a personnel basket.
The crane hoists the spider excavator and places it at the cleanup site.
The spider excavator enables the project team to safely remove contaminated soil from a site that would otherwise be inaccessible.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – EM’s Los Alamos Field Office (EM-LA) and contractor Los Alamos National Security (LANS) have begun removing contaminated soil along the steep south-facing slopes of Los Alamos Canyon adjacent to the Los Alamos Townsite.
The contaminated soil is primarily associated with legacy outfalls and surface disposal from the Manhattan Project and early Cold War research and site management activities. EM-LA is conducting the cleanup under its Historical Properties Completion Campaign in coordination with LANS and its subcontractor TerranearPMC (TPMC). That contractor successfully completed EM cleanup on other nearby sites in 2016, and near the Smith’s Marketplace in 2015.
The above photos show scenes from May 24, 2017 — the day a spider excavator was deployed at the first of two cleanup sites.