Related to replacement of housing is removal of the airport from its mesa-top location
to a site at White Rock. It will be constructed in the Summer and Fall of 1954, including a
paved runway with a minimum length of 4,000 feet, an access road, control building, field
lighting, and other necessary appurtenances,

The report for 1947-1950 emphasized sufficiently the failures of water supply and
natural gas facilities, shortage of electricity, and over-loading of sewage treatment plants.
For example, the original gas line placed Los Alamos on the far end of a gas transmission

line of inadequate size. Los Alamos was served after Santa Fe and Albuquerque had obtained
their gas from the same line, This condition resulted in poor gas service at Los Alamos,

and was corrected by new construction. This is shown by the fact that in February 1951,
the gas transmission line which originally served this area ruptured between Albuquerque
and Santa Fe.

Prior to the Bloomfield gas line construction, such an accident would have

caused a serious gas shortage at Los Alamos, but with the new line in operation the gas
supply was adequate.

All such inadequate utility facilities have been reinforced by new construction with the

result that fear of failure, which would cause widespread distress to either the technical
programs or the community, has been practically eliminated. Minor operating difficulties
have arisen, but serious trouble has become a thing of the past.

The major construction projects which have been completed and which have brought
about the adequacy of the present Los Alamos utility systems are: multiple-source water
development, the TA-3 steam and power plant, the Bloomfield gas line, and the Pueblo
Canyon sewage treatment plant, The adequacy of these plants has been proved by the fact that
they have met all increased demands caused by the growth of Los Alamos. Minor additions
to the utilities systems, in order to keep pace with growth or changed conditions, are all that
will be needed in the future.
Owing largely to these construction developments, Los Alamos is now able to support
its present population of 12,700. The table below shows the yearly population increase:

Total
Population

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1953

7,150

8,200

8,643

10,620

12,378

12,664

12,700

Community Operations
One of the first and primary objectives of SFOO was provision of a community at Los
Alamos which would fit all essential requirements for agreeable living and which might be-

come self-governing and, to some extent, self-supporting.

The Manager, SFOO, projected

Federal subsidies to the medical center and to the schools.

Full self-support, in the sense

in 1948 his objective for the community to be eventually self-supporting other than continuing
of no requirement for Federal subsidizing of community operations, was not believed pos-

hed

sible although it was a goal,

1953,

Such full self-support was, however, achieved in fiscal year

:

we

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