Kirtland water deemed safe despite fuel leak - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Kirtland water deemed safe despite fuel leak

Between six to 18 inches of jet fuel floats on top of the water table beneath Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M, and has spread to nearby Albuquerque due to leakage from a corroded underground fuel pipe.

But base commander, Col. Robert Suminsby, said water on base and in Albuquerque is still safe because the fuel hasn’t reached production wells.

Of wells pumping out Kirtland and Albuquerque’s usable water, the closest and most threatened by the fuel plume belong to the base and the Veterans Affairs hospital. Three are owned by Kirtland and one is owned by the hospital with all four sitting 1,000-2,000 feet away, Suminsby said.

Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority production wells sit further back at 1.5 miles away from the known plume. “If the fuel reaches those wells, they will have to be shut down,” said Baird Swanson, a scientist with the New Mexico Environmental Department.

City water is tested annually for contamination while the VA and base water is tested quarterly. All tests have shown the water to be clean thus far, said Suminsby and John Stomp, water resources manager at the county water authority.

Kirtland officials discovered the underground leak in 1999 and said they immediately contacted state and city officials, but are still unsure how much was leaked and for how long. Suminsby said it could have started in the 1960s.

The fuel was found in the underground water supply in February 2007, when base civil engineers found fuel about 500 feet down. It’s unclear how far the fuel plume in the water table stretches, but officials estimate it covers at least 10 acres, said Mark Holmes, a program manager in the Kirtland environmental office.

Kirtland received emergency funds last February to dig five monitoring wells to assess the spill — including four on base and one off. One of the wells recently found the fuel under Albuquerque’s USS Bullhead Park, which sits next to Kirtland and show how the fuel continues to spread.

“If it reaches our wells that water is unusable,” Stomp said. “The base needs to now go clean it up. They need to pump it out and either burn it or let it evaporate in ponds.”

If ingested, a blend of water and jet fuel would be toxic and even trace amounts could cause cancer, said Michael Jess, a professor at the University of Nebraska’s Water Center.

Kirtland will spend $2.8 million this year to drill 11 additional wells between now and the end of 2009 to monitor how far the fuel is spreading, and install a soil evacuation system to remove the fuel vapors, Holmes said. However, there are no plans yet to pump the fuel directly out of the water table, Swanson and Suminsby said.

Wells dug to pump out the fuel would only be able to draw out a small amount since it is lighter than the water and floats on the top, Swanson said. A soil evacuation system will be able to suck more fuel out of the ground than a series of wells could take out of the water table, he said.

In 2004, Kirtland installed a similar fuel removal system near the initial leak where the base stores its fuel and has since removed 130,000 gallons of fuel vapors, according to base officials.

To prove to Albuquerque residents a health threat above ground from the fuel leakage, the state will be taking air samples at Bullhead Park to ensure it’s clean.

Kirtland leaders have informed both state environmental and Albuquerque city officials about the fuel leakage including briefings at public meetings that came after the 2007 discovery. However, Suminsby said the Air Force chose to wait to contact the media until July 11 when plans for a full clean up effort were finished.

“We knew the first question was going to be: What are you going to do about it?” Suminsby said. “Until we secured the funding for the additional wells and the remediation effort we didn’t have an answer for that question.”

He said Kirtland officials had to reach out to local residents especially because some of the wells will be dug throughout the community and would prompt questions if not addressed.

“There’s an old saying out here that whiskey's for drinking and water is for fighting so we expected a certain amount of controversy on this,” Suminsby said.

But some local and base residents don’t buy it. Residents like Don Hancock, — a director at the Southwest Research and Information Center, an Albuquerque environmental protection group — are upset the Air Force waited nine years to publicly announce the leakage and explain the threats .

“It was handled wrong in the Air Force by having the leak in the first place and not informing the public,” he said. “How are we supposed to now believe they have the best solution?”

Last year, investigators found 22 military bases including 13 Air Force bases had water contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), a volatile organic compound and cancer-causing agent, according to doctors.

Holmes said the fuel contamination doesn’t compare because TCE dissolves into water unlike the fuel that floats on top.