Los Alamos National Laboratory is the outsized economic driver for its area—a leading employer, the kind of community influencer that makes or breaks the
municipalities around it.
“It has a reverberating impact,” says Andrea Romero, executive director of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities. “When the lab hiccups … the rest of the region really gets the flu.”
Which is why the coalition has been fighting to stay at the table as the National Nuclear Security Administration hosts
site tours to show interested parties what they’re getting into if they bid on the management and operations contract for the lab.
