Sink the RCLC; save the DNFSB

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September 4, 2018

For reference: previous letter (8/24/18): "Wakeup"

Dear leaders on our New Mexico "short list" --

Thank you for all you are doing in our communities, now under assault in so many ways.

First, the time is more ripe than ever to get our northern New Mexico cities and counties and tribes out of the insultingly-named "Regional Coalition of LANL Communities" (RCLC), and to build an associated public narrative around winding down nuclear weapons altogether, and the nuclear weapons appropriations going to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL).

We don't need more pits (LANL management's fervently desired new mission), we don't need new nuclear weapons (which both labs seek), we don't need all the nuclear weapons we have (just for starters). We would like a vocal minority -- we on this list -- to start calling for winding this industry down. Please help us.

These labs are world capitals of nuclear weapons promotion. The New Mexico congressional delegation, mostly Democrats are pretty much right up there in leading the world in promoting weapons of mass destruction.

This industry hurts New Mexico (as discussed a bit below). It does so in part by corruption of our ideas, especially our ideas about ourselves, our society, our economy, and our public morality. They are demoralizing.

The RCLC is reeling. The latest news is that there will be a meeting this Thursday night in Los Alamos regarding whether Los Alamos County wants to remain the RCLC's fiscal agent. Since we last wrote there has been more outstanding reporting and editorializing on this inherently-corrupt "slush fund" (quote from Rio Grande Sun editorial of 8/23/18).

Trish was able to get the Adams+Crow Investigative Report of RCLC improper use of public funds on behalf of Los Alamos County (8/8/18) (posted without lengthy appendices), and here's the State of New Mexico, Special Audit, Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (8/7/2018).

Presently, the members of the RCLC are:

• City of Española
  
• Los Alamos County
  
• Ohkay Owingeh
  
• Pueblo of Jemez
  
• Rio Arriba County
• Santa Fe County (there is a rumor that the Chair of the County Commission has introduced, or may introduce, a measure to withdraw from the RCLC)
  
• City of Santa Fe
• Taos County
• Town of Taos

Please, please, please:

• Contact your city, county, and tribal officials asking them to end participation in and taxpayer funding of the RCLC. (See the previous local letter or ones before that for various talking points, or glance over the newspaper coverage.) 
  
• Write letters to editors (LTEs) (more on the value of LTEs). Promote your letter with social media.
  
• Go to public meetings and intervene face to face. If you live in one of the above localities, your elected officials are part of the nuclear gravy train. 
  
• Organize your friends to do the same.
  
• The underlying issue is not just some details about how the RCLC is corrupt. The RCLC is a roughly $200,000/year operation, ballpark. LANL's nuclear weapons program is a roughly $2 billion/year operation, not counting a few hundred million in ancillary costs. That's 10,000 times greater. The RCLC is first and foremost a team-building exercise for LANL, a PR campaign aimed at local leaders, to keep them mentally dependent. On the team. Never mind what the RCLC says it is, or its mission statement. Let's not miss the real issue. LANL is not making breakfast cereal. It does not get $3 billion per year to benefit humanity.* (*That's the LANL estimate of next year's total budget, including $188 M in environmental management [best not to call it cleanup]).
  

If the people on this list don't make those calls and write those letters, and do those face to face interventions, they won't happen. Trish and I must slay other dragons -- this one's for you.

The RCLC is an organization in crisis, as it should be until its end. This crisis is a golden opportunity to start a bigger conversion about nuclear weapons, federal (and our delegation's) priorities, plutonium of course, and the future of our communities.

**********
Second, regarding the assault on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), please thank our senators for the really no-kidding terrific letter they wrote to the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, asking that the Trump Administration's new Order restricting DNFSB activities and communications be suspended and that the proposed deep DNFSB staff cut be suspended as well. Please ask them to follow up on that letter and to inform you of their success or failure.

There was a tremendous flurry of activity in this office, in the media, and at the DNFSB itself last week (the hearing about the new Order was quite substantive, even gripping, for those following this closely) concerning the controversial new Order. (Sidebar: at one point in the hearing a 99-year-old founding member of the DNFSB, Jack Crawford, with whom Trish especially used to meet with in the 1990s, put his questions on the table about the new Trump Order. Crawford was on the carrier Yorktown in World War II when it was sunk, and is its last surviving crew member.)

The issues may seem a bit technical (though we and the fine pieces done by experienced reporters have explained them, collected here), and most of the action is in Washington, so we're not putting any further action request out on this today. So apart from contacting our senators and asking them to follow up, stay tuned. Especially with the start provided by our senators' letter, there are plenty of ways for citizens to help save this outstanding small federal agency -- the ONLY public and worker safety oversight agency for the nuclear weapons complex -- and we will put some of them in a Bulletin that goes to a wider audience from which actions could reach other key congressional actors. We are going to stay right on top of this.

Thank you all,

Greg & Trish, for the Study Group