New Mexico Mercury

A major environmental disaster more than half a century in the making is lurking right below our very feet, and yet the Susana Martinez administration is irresponsibly and unlawfully choosing to look the other way. Officials with Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque have accepted responsibility for a major contamination of groundwater that has already spread beyond its boundaries.

The Governor has systematically dismantled the New Mexico Environment Department and is choosing to officially ignore a crisis situation that should already have warranted critical status in our state’s largest city. The fact that the Governor has halted the state from officially holding the Air Force accountable for the groundwater contamination is a clear act of political malfeasance and is a willful violation of the public trust. The Governor and Mayor Berry have their heads buried in the sand on this one, but if they keep their heads there they’re surely going to get contaminated as well.

Scientific studies by KAFB itself suggest a plume of ethylene-dibromide (EDB) contaminated groundwater 1,000 feet wide and more than a mile long is moving northeast from the base. According to a 2009 KAFB memo, 80 percent of the plume is now beyond the boundary of the base and it’s advancing as much as 385 feet per year, headed directly for the nearby Ridgecrest neighborhood.

It is believed that jet fuel tanks on the base have been steadily leaking since their installation in 1953. The leak went undetected until 1992 and the Air Force consistently ignored the problem on the state and federal levels until 1999 when it conducted tests that showed evidence of missing fuel. In 2006, an Air Force contractor drilled an exploratory well just outside the base's northern boundary and found four feet of jet fuel floating on top of the aquifer. Two years later, NMED estimated the plume to be upwards of 24 million gallons, an amount 240 times larger than a 2000 KAFB estimate.

The state Legislature passed a Memorial that requests that the New Mexico Congressional delegation obtain funds for setting up an independent scientific task force to examine the Kirtland jet fuel problem and to propose immediate emergency measures that could be put into place along with consideration of long term measures.  Such an independent task force could be established by the National Academies of Science National Research Council. I support the immediate implementation of an independent task force.

There is no real ongoing, coordinated political action to achieve clean up of the jet fuel contamination that will protect Albuquerque’s drinking water. The Governor, the Mayor and others know there is a pending critical disaster and yet they remain silent. The health and economic consequences for Albuquerque and the state will be unprecedented if they continue to sit on their hands!