Subcontract worth up to $80 million over five years

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, April 12, 2011—Los Alamos National Laboratory today announced it has selected two small businesses to compete for up to $80 million in well drilling and groundwater monitoring work.

The work will strengthen the Lab’s ability to address groundwater monitoring requirements and contribute important data to LANL’s investigation of Cold War-era waste sites.

“Being able to efficiently drill new wells that produce quality groundwater samples is critical to completing our cleanup goals,” said Michael Graham, the Lab’s associate director for Environmental Programs. “And the fact that this work will go to local businesses is great.”

The two companies selected are TerranearPMC, LLC and Eberline Services, Inc. Both have long-established Los Alamos offices, significant local workforces, and qualify as Northern New Mexico businesses under LANL procurement rules.

Under a contracting vehicle known as a Master Task Order Agreement, the two companies will compete for individual tasks in LANL’s well program. The agreement term is three years, with two additional optional years.

Drilling wells at Los Alamos is challenging because of the region’s many alternating layers of rock—some solid, others crumbly—with pockets of water at various depths. The deepest wells reach down more than 1,000 feet. LANL has completed more than 30 deep groundwater wells since 2008, and the monitoring network has more than 200 wells and sample ports at various depths.

Results are uploaded to RACER, the public Internet site for LANL environmental data.

The drilling Master Task Order Agreement is the first of six similar agreements the Lab expects to award this spring and summer—worth up to $1 billion in environmental investigation, cleanup, and waste transportation work in the coming years.