KAFB holding public meeting on fuel spill cleanup

Air Force has spent $125M so far, with $99M more planned

Members of the community will get a chance to question Air Force officials and representatives from the New Mexico Environment Department about the cleanup of contamination from decades of jet fuel spills at Kirtland Air Force Base.

The Air Force is hosting a public meeting at the African American Performing Arts Center on Thursday from 5:30 to 8 p.m., to provide an update on the base’s Bulk Fuels Facility cleanup activities.

“We’re looking forward to a very good dialogue with our partners Downtown as we continue to move this forward together,” Kirtland installation commander Col. David Miller said. He said the drinking water off base has never been at risk during the cleanup.

“And we are seeing the (groundwater contamination) plume recede back toward the base,” he said.

But Bernalillo County Commission Chairwoman Maggie Hart Stebbins and fellow Commissioner Debbie O’Malley — who are members of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority board, of which O’Malley is chairwoman — have voiced concerns about the cleanup. They sent a letter to Assistant Secretary John Henderson asking ques

tions about the project.

Hart Stebbins told the Journal the water authority wasn’t questioning the fact progress has been made in the cleanup, but said there were concerns about changes being made to yearly plans for the cleanup, the accuracy of monitoring wells below a rising water table, the timeline for a permanent remedy, a reduction in project funding, and the possibility the pump-and-treat system would be discontinued.

She also said the water authority wanted verification of the Air Force’s claim that 91% of the ethylene dibromide mass has been removed by the pump-and-treat system in the target area north of Ridgecrest Road. The Air Force said the contamination plume has collapsed to Gibson Boulevard.

Hart Stebbins said Henderson’s response didn’t entirely answer the questions the water authority had asked.

Henderson did tell Hart Stebbins and O’Malley in letters that the Air Force remained committed to working with stakeholders “as we complete the investigative stage and move on to the final remedy.”

Kate Lynnes, senior adviser for the bulk fuels facility cleanup, and Scott Clark, of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, told the Journal there were no plans to discontinue the pump-and-treat system or other interim measures before a final remedy was in place. There are four extraction wells that are pumping the contaminated groundwater to the Bulk Fuels Facility on the Air Force Base. Treated water is sent to the golf course or back into the aquifer.

To date, approximately 753 million gallons of groundwater have been treated.

The leak was discovered in 1999 after jet fuel was found on the surface near a base fueling facility. It was eventually found that holes had worn in underground pipes used to carry jet fuel from delivery tankers to storage tanks and that millions of gallons had been slowly leaking, undetected, for decades.

Lynnes said the Air Force began a soilvapor extraction and used a method called “bioslurping” after the contamination was discovered and before the pump-and-treat system began operation in 2015 to deal with the groundwater plume that was growing off base.

To date, the Air Force has spent $125 million on the cleanup. Another $99 million in funding is planned, Henderson said in his letters to O’Malley and Hart Stebbins.