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LOS ALAMOS — State Environment Secretary Ron Curry is pressuring Los Alamos National Laboratory to follow an agreement that calls for the lab to clean up hazardous waste by 2015.

However, a spokesman for the lab's new manager said it has met all requirements.

"The laboratory takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously and is following the consent order," lab spokesman James Rickman said.

The consent order, reached in March 2005 when the University of California was the lab's manager, requires the lab to clean up hazardous waste within a set time.

However, the state has proposed fines for the lab four times since July. A new manager, Los Alamos National Security LLC - consisting of the University of California, Bechtel Corp., BWX Technologies Inc., and Washington Group International - took over lab operations in June.

Curry said the lab should be spending money cleaning up waste rather than paying fines for violating the agreement.

"We want them to embrace it," he said.

In October, the Environment Department proposed fining the lab $2.3 million because it had mixed demolition rubble with other waste, and fined it $30,000 for not cleaning up an ash pile where classified documents and trash were burned in the 1950s.

The previous month, the department proposed a $795,620 fine over the lab's failure to quickly report chromium contamination in ground monitoring wells. And in July, Curry's department proposed a $125,000 fine after the lab and the government agency that oversees it, the National Nuclear Security Administration, dumped 20 tons of hazardous waste into a Los Alamos County landfill.

The fines are all under negotiation.

Rickman said Los Alamos National Security agrees it's better to spend money on cleanup rather than fines, and said lab leaders have discussed ways to speed up the work.

"With fixed funding, it's crucial that the laboratory maximize activities that meet consent order requirements," he said. "However, the consent order is heavily weighted toward upfront investigation."

The Environment Department is particularly concerned about groundwater contamination.

"New Mexico's water resources are so precious, and Los Alamos is just beginning to understand its effects on the groundwater," said James Bearzi, chief of the department's Hazardous Waste Bureau.