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Remediation for KAFB wells may not be enough

David B. McCo y / Executive Directo r, Citizen Actio n New Mexico 19 ho urs ago

T he recent Water Utility Board meeting was f ocused on Albuquerques contaminated aquif er that supplies drinking water f or the city. Intra-agency cooperation and planning are promised to solve a problem that has been brewing since the 1950s. Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn expressed conf idence that combined agency ef f orts will address the carcinogenic ethylene dibromide (EDB) plume bef ore it can reach city wells. Flynns statement seemed sincere enough that some remediation action will begin now. T here is no alternative replacement water f or the Ridgecrest wells and no real way to stop the plume f rom contaminating the wells. Political statements minimizing the size of the EDB plume and clean-up problems have been made f or years to pacif y an anxious public, homeowners and realtors. However, the largest EDB plume cleaned up by the Environment Department was f or a gasoline station and cannot be compared to the 24 million gallon spill that can contaminate billions of gallons of water. T here are good wishes and intentions, but no f actual basis, f or believing that EDB will not hit the municipal wells. T here still is not an identif ied technology to halt the EDB that is less than three-quarters of a mile away f rom municipal wells. No scheduled plan f or remediation of EDB will be in place until the end of 2014. T hat is, if the Air Force and Environment Department can f igure out a plan to drill down in a densely populated urban area and extract or treat hundreds of billions of gallons of EDB contaminated water. T he plume containing EDB is 500 f eet below ground surf ace and is more than a mile long and a half mile wide. Technical requirements and costs remain daunting. T here still is no 3-D model of the aquif er which is the f irst necessary step f or corrective measures to be made. T he f ull reach, depth and velocity of the EDB plume is unknown. Pumping the Ridgecrest wells is drawing the plume downward and closer to the wells in an accelerated manner. More monitoring wells are not being installed to f ind how deep the EDB plume goes down. Ten shallow monitoring wells are no longer usef ul. Sampling at 35 monitoring wells was compromised by air bubbles in the samples. No new money is allocated f or more monitoring wells. T he Air Force contract f or the jet f uel spill is basically out of money. No monitoring wells are being installed next to the municipal wells at Ridgecrest as was requested by a Water Utility Resolution12-14. T he Environment Department told the Air Force years ago to install 16 soil vapor extraction units. T he Air Force ref used. In the interim, the bulk of the jet f uel became trapped beneath the water table. T he environmental contractor, Shaw, shut down the f our soil vapor extraction units that were previously used and substituted a new expensive unit that operates poorly but benef its Shaw. At a recent upper management meeting at the Veterans Administration Hospital, a discussion was held

regarding the shutdown of the VA supply well and obtaining water f rom the city at Air Force expense. T he Air Force is ref using a Freedom of Inf ormation request to provide the raw EDB laboratory data f rom the VA monitoring well that is only 200 f eet away f rom the VA supply well. T he city and the VA would probably not be discussing contingency planning f or the shutdown of wells if there was not a concern that EDB will contaminate the drinking water wells. Kirtland supply wells #15 and #16 were recently shut down and are no longer monitored f or EDB. T he issue was raised several years ago about how the Air Force intends to dispose of millions of gallons of contaminated water f rom the ground using pump and treat methods. Currently, there is no plan. T he years of delay and ignoring the enormity of the f uel leak problem have resulted in a situation so dire that any kind of remediation may f all short of protecting the municipal wells.