City of Santa Fe pays out $16,000 to Los Alamos Study Group over records request lawsuit
August 1, 2026
Re: City of Santa Fe pays out $16,000 to Los Alamos Study Group over records request lawsuit (text below)
Dear friends and colleagues --
Published comment:
Some background to our request:
-
A previous similar IPRA request to the City revealed a series of private meetings between then-Mayor Webber, LANL, NNSA, a wealthy developer, and representatives of other large New Mexico institutions to discuss three huge laboratory-oriented mixed-use developments, one of which would be in south Santa Fe. That IPRA request had been promptly fulfilled. There were no problems with the City's response, that time.
-
NNSA, LANL, and the whole region are struggling with housing and transportation issues related to LANL's rapid expansion and conversion into a nuclear weapons component manufacturing center. LANL and NNSA are counting on Santa Fe to house thousands of new workers for what has become Donald Trump's ever-expanding new plutonium factory. There has been no resistance from the City. By 2023, according to Los Alamos County, some 12,000 workers were commuting daily into Los Alamos County, which has been unable to build any significant amount of housing for LANL workers. While the City of Santa Fe is undoubtedly sincere in seeking affordable housing, there is also no question that the thousands of new LANL workers who have moved to Santa Fe in the last few years have bid up the cost of housing, especially rentals, for everyone. LANL director Mason said in a Washington, DC speech that his employees soaked up 40% of the new housing units built in Santa Fe over a recent 5-year period. His seniormost assistant said at the time that he was spending much of his time working with land developers. Readers should understand that not just some but ALL of LANL's institutional growth has been, and is, to design and build new nuclear weapons.
-
Correspondence received in the course of this IPRA show that City officials have been working closely with LANL to help house the latter's workers and even to help find possible locations for a new campus.
-
The Director of LANL and the Manager of the NNSA Los Alamos Field Office have both stated that NNSA was actively seeking to build a laboratory installation in Santa Fe. A senior NNSA official spoke to us of a nuclear weapons component manufacturing plant as a possible part of NNSA's plan for Santa Fe.
-
Satellite laboratories were proposed and discussed (video) at a public Los Alamos County Council meeting in July 2023.
-
NNSA had previously formally offered to purchase a large parcel of land owned by the City in central Santa Fe and redevelop the entire site as a national nuclear weapons center. This is the City’s Midtown Campus, formerly Bruns Army Base, completed in 1943, and until 1960 LANL’s "Technical Area 47," the core portion of which later became the College of Santa Fe. That plan fell through.
-
A prominent realty company had already been in negotiations with LANL to lease a former public school property for a "biological defense" laboratory in Santa Fe, to house and experiment with infectious organisms. Those negotiations collapsed.
-
This is just some of what has been going on in the background. Under Mayor Webber, the City's prior commitments opposing plutonium manufacturing were not honored. The problems listed above are part of the result. Based on our 35 years of experience in the field, and for many reasons that do not fit in this comment, we know it would make a great deal of positive difference on a local, national, and even international scale if the City were to renew its long-standing formal, albeit non-binding, opposition to plutonium warhead core production and instead identify once again with peace and diplomacy.
-
We touched upon some of this in a recent advertisement in the Santa Fe Reporter ("Will Santa Fe aspire to be a "City of Peace," or will it be a City of War?"
I should add that what the City paid is neither enough to deter future non-compliance nor enough to pay for our time and costs. Legal settlements in information law never are, in our experience. The prize isn't money. It's what the public and lawmakers learn, and then what they do with that knowledge.
That's all for now. Have a wonderful weekend, everybody -- restorative, productive, enlightening, deepening -- or whatever you have in mind.
Greg, Trish, and interns
Permalink for this letter (posting may not be instant); prior activist letters.
City of Santa Fe pays out $16,000 to Los Alamos Study Group over records request lawsuit
By Carina Julig cjulig@sfnewmexican.com
Greg Mello, executive director of Los Alamos Study Group, looks at a group of aerial images taken over Los Alamos National Laboratory in his home office on Feb. 1, 2023.
The city of Santa Fe has paid out $16,158 to a nuclear watchdog group in a settlement over a records request lawsuit, its latest in a string of payouts over the last several years for violating the state Inspection of Public Records Act.
The lawsuit stemmed from allegations the city had stymied Los Alamos Study Group’s efforts to obtain emails about Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plans for a possible laboratory installation including a nuclear weapons component manufacturing plant in Santa Fe.
“While we are reasonably pleased with the outcome overall, observers should understand that the City was willing to go to legal extremes to prevent having to open its record of correspondence with LANL to the public, and the City continues to stall simple requests for what should be public information right down to the present day,” study group Executive Director Greg Mello said in a Wednesday news release about the settlement.
According to the release, the organization filed suit in April 2024 after submitting a records request in January 2024 for correspondence between city of Santa Fe employees, LANL and the National Nuclear Security Administration since the start of 2023.
The statement accused the city of slow-walking responsive emails, which it described as being released in “a seemingly random order that was often repetitive over the next several months, precluding any meaningful review.”
In October 2024, state District Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered the city to produce the remainder of the responsive documents, which the city challenged in court.
In June, Biedscheid ordered the city to pay Los Alamos Study Group’s attorney’s fees and costs as well as 20% of the financial penalty for 280 days past the deadline for providing the emails under state open records law.
City spokesperson Peter Olson did not respond to a request for comment Friday about the settlement, including to an inquiry about how much the city spent in outside legal fees on the case.
Study group members have recently spoken during public comment at Santa Fe City Council meetings urging councilors to formally oppose the production of plutonium warhead triggers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
|
