As DOGE continues it’s federal government wilding spree, purportedly searching for examples of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, we seem to have had another case of keyword search gone awry. One of the leases DOGE decided to cancel is the lease for Skeen-Whitlock Building in Carlsbad, New Mexico, a 90,000 square foot facility which manages the nation’s only storage area for DOD-created nuclear waste and the only operating deep geologic nuclear waste storage facility in the world.
I’m not the first one to report this. It’s been a big issue in New Mexico. The local congressman, Gabe Vasquez, has been all over it. But as far as I can tell NOTUS is the only national outlet to mention it so far. As a secondary matter, I’m not sure I’d lease my building to a nuclear waste processing facility. I feel like that’s got to be a hit on subsequent lease value. But that’s sort of not the point. An additional point: it’s not the deep geologic underground place where they store it. Not sure you’d invest in building that and then just see if there’s anyone who’d want to lease it. It’s the facility where they process the nuclear waste before putting it in the super deep nuclear storage hole.
From what I can tell, locals think that DOGE is backing off on this. A statement from Carlsbad Mayor Richard Lopez said that he “learned [Tuesday] that the miscommunication has been resolved, and the lease remains intact.” But maybe not? As of this morning DOGE still lists the lease as canceled.
So who knows?
