According to the New Mexico Environment Department, the state will post online all radiation monitoring data from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air pollution-measuring equipment now deployed around the 103,800-acre Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos.

But it may require more than a week to do so, because of the time required to accurately analyze air filter samples, Department spokesman Jim Winchester and others said Friday.

“The scientific analysis of the filter requires several days to get the most accurate count of atmospheric elements,” Winchester said. “The air sample monitoring data will be on the NMED site as soon as they are available. That being said, because of the natural radon present in New Mexico, a period of seven days must pass before the sample analysis can start to all the decay of the radon.”

Preliminary data can be obtained much more quickly, but is less reliable, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) officials indicated earlier this week.

Preliminary measurements from LANL’s fixed air monitors and an EPA aircraft equipped with radiation-measuring equipment indicated “no radiological contamination” in the fire’s smoke plume, Sen. Tom Udall told Veritas New Mexico Thursday afternoon.

The aircraft flew into the smoke plume just north of Los Alamos Canyon and west of the City of Los Alamos on Wednesday, lab officials said.

LANL director Charles McMillan said Thursday that preliminary LANL fixed-monitor measurements had revealed data consistent with “what we would expect for a forest fire in this part of New Mexico.”

“We aren’t seeing anything unusual in the samples today,” McMillan said Thursday.

Working with the state, the EPA has deployed 12 portable air quality monitors to measure particulate matter and radiation levels around the fire, Winchester said.

The EPA equipment supplements LANL’s 60 fixed-site monitors in Las Alamos and surrounding areas, and the state’s five fixed-site monitors stationed around the perimeter of the lab’s property, according to Winchester and lab officials.

EPA air monitors are currently measuring the air for several types of radiation and radioisotopes at the Santa Clara Pueblo, San Ildefonso Pueblo, Nambé, Pojoaque, Abiquiú, Jemez, Pena Blanca, Cuba, Española, Taos, Dixon and Embudo, according to an Environment Department press release. Two more will be installed at Cochiti Pueblo as soon as possible, Winchester said.

“The Environment Department continues vigilant oversight of air monitoring in the Los Alamos and surrounding areas,” Winchester said. “The Environment Department is taking independent measurements to further assure the public that accurate information is being provided on the status of air quality.”

The EPA and state air monitoring data will be processed by independent labs, rather than those used by LANL, state DOE Oversight Bureau Chief Tom Skibitski told Veritas NM.

An EPA official referred all questions to the state Friday, and declined to release maps of monitoring station locations to Veritas NM, citing “national security” concerns. Winchester said release of a map could lead to vandalism of sensitive and expensive air-monitoring equipment. (Veritas NM requested maps after attempting to confirm that one EPA air monitor was stationed at the Los Alamos airport, Tuesday and Thursday. Winchester clarified Friday that the air monitor in question was actually based near, but not on, airport property.)

Instead of disclosing a map, the state released Friday a list of general locations for the EPA air monitors.

As winds shift, air monitors may be moved, Winchester said.

Unlike the current Las Conchas wildfire, the Cerro Grande fire in 2000 burned extensive tracts of LANL property, including areas with contaminated soils. Some critics of the lab have said at that time, federal air monitors were stationed far from smoke plumes, and agencies included that data in their overall assessments of air quality during the fire.

“One (monitor) went east to Clines Corners taking measurements where there was no smoke,” Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety Executive Director Joni Arends said. “ They traveled north to El Dorado, to Santa Fe and to the top of the Ski Basin.  Again, sampling in areas with no smoke.  The second team sampled along I-25 to Cochiti Pueblo and took samples around that area.  They traveled through Santa Fe, Espanola and Abiquiu taking samples.  They did not sample in the Rio Grande Valley from Espanola to Taos.  Taos was in an orange plume for days, but EPA did not sample there.”

But monitoring equipment is being placed strategically around the Las Conchas fire, Winchester emphasized Friday.

“All of these monitors have been strategically placed around the area of the Las Conchas Fire and in the direction of wind paths,” Winchester said.

Additional air monitors are being deployed, he added.

Areas with known soil contamination from historical LANL operations — and the part of the lab where thousands of barrels of low-level radioactive waste had been assembled in recent months for transport to WIPP — have not been burned in the current blaze and are not immediately threatened by the fire, LANL officials and fire officials said Thursday.

Growth of the fire, which spread aggressively into the Santa Clara Pueblo Thursday, poses a more immediate threat to residents than radiation issues, McMillan and others said.