WIPP Keeping Public Engaged, Informed

Team holds community forum in Las Vegas, New Mexico

LAS VEGAS, N.M. - The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) team held a community forum in Las Vegas, New Mexico, last week with participants joining in person and virtually. WIPP periodically holds community forums throughout New Mexico to increase the public's engagement and understanding of WIPP's New Mexico and national cleanup mission under the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM). The forums, or public meetings, were also held in Roswell and Carlsbad this past year.

Moderator Tom Carroll, left, assisted while Mark Bollinger, center, manager of EM's Carlsbad Field Office, and Ken Harrawood, right, president and program manager of Salado Isolation Mining Company, provided a WIPP operations update and answered questions from the audience. Most of the two-hour session was devoted to Q&A, with many questions centered around the safety of transporting defense-related transuranic waste to WIPP.

CAST Specialty Transportation truck drivers, New Mexico State Police vehicle inspectors and New Mexico WIPP Transportation Safety Program Manager Eletha Trujillo were in attendance and helped answer questions. A CAST semi-tractor truck and platform with empty transuranic waste shipping containers was parked outside to give attendees a closer look and the opportunity to ask questions. Salado Isolation Mining Contractors is WIPP's prime management and operations contractor, and CAST is the contractor hauling waste shipments from EM sites to WIPP.

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