“Gone back somewhere to a home with good water”! May I ask! Where are we going to find a home with good water in the 21st century? Our water is becoming contaminated practically everywhere, at least everywhere there are cars, other petrol-burning machinery, and people, and that is just about everywhere. Albuquerque is not unique. It is just a part of a globally ballooning problem that comes with an expanding population of an energy hungry people. Remember! If it wasn’t for KAFB and its associated contractors, Albuquerque would not have a water supply that is in danger of becoming polluted. The grandiose chemists, chemical, and environmental engineers in the Pentagon, the EPA, and the New Mexico Department of Environmental Quality, not forgetting those hard working souls at the Bernallio County Water Department will solve the problem in time, probably before the contamination becomes critical. In the meantime, the water user in Albuquerque must be patient. They should, however, keep up the pressure. Don’t let the bureaucrats, the fancy chemists, and engineers sleep on their laurels. From the data that I have seen, there is no problem with the Albuquerque water supply as of now. If the fuel does reach the water table, it will be more costly to clean up, even to the point of passing it through carbon filters, either commercially or at the point of use, but it will be cleaned up. It will just save us taxpayers a little money if they would only do it as quickly as possible. Since the spill obviously went on for 30 or more years before it was detected, one can’t expect it to be cleaned up in the matter of a few years. The clean up will take years as well. But I’m sure that no one in Albuquerque wants to see KAFB and its associated high paying contractors run out of town with the loss of thousands of associated high paying jobs, especially those whose jobs might be effected.

The Air Force has nothing to do with “what to do with the clean water”. Only the New Mexico Department of Health can approve water for human consumption. Only the Health Department can approve it for watering lawns, agricultural usage, or whatever. Let’s not blame the Air Force for something that they are not legally able to do. They can pour more and more of our tax money into it, drilling more wells, and sucking out more of the contaminated water, and decontaminating it. This is where the people of Albuquerque need to keep the pressure on.

As far as the degree of current contamination is concerned as well as the time period when the contamination will become critical, I have only seen the published data which indicates that the Albuquerque water supply is okay as of now. I don’t think anyone knows when the critical point will be reached, if ever, (soil and rock are excellent absorbers of organic chemical pollutants from hydrocarbon fuels); but it is not necessary to bankrupt and already bankrupt nation to achieve mach speeds with a cleanup that of necessity takes time. The aguifer wasn’t contaminated overnight, and it won’t be cleaned up overnight.

I don’t see what Arkansas has to do with the KAFB fuel leak. We have our pollution problems too. Have you ever heard of the oil refining and bromine industry in South Arkansas? The underground aquifer there has been threatened for years mostly by a technique of hazardous waste disposal known as deep well injection. Its not being done now thanks to the EPA, whose excessive regulation has totally destroyed the bromine industry in the USA and just about destroyed the oil industry. The South Arkansas case just doesn’t potentially affect as many people or as much capital as the Albuquerque incident. Scaling it down to the level of the South Arkansas economy, it is potentially just as important.

I have studied closely the EDB maps published in the Albuquerque Journal. In the 12 years since the spill presumably began, the fuel has barely moved north of Gibson Boulevard. The AF monitoring well on Anderson still indicates no contamination. Only one well south of Anderson (I can’t remember the street now) indicated only a slight contamination of EDB. The fuel is obviously moving slowly through soil and rock rather than rapidly in streams of underground water. With such a slow rate of migration, the fuel will likely decompose before any significant ground water contamination occurs. The hydrocarbon fuel is decomposing faster than the ethylene dibromide (EDB), which is the parameter measured on the maps.

I don’t mean to minimize the problem. The fuel needs to be cleaned up; but, at the same time, I see no justication for a multi-million dollar Manhattan Engineering District type project that developed the atomic bomb during WWII. Mother nature is working on Albuquerque’s (as well as the taxpayer’s) side here. We should let her do her thing. Hydrocarbon fuel degrades, and the geology of the terrain just might give her sufficient time to do her job.

In the late Sixties, I used to bike by the tank farm where the spill presumably occurred on my daily trips out to the Goat Farm to work. Although I always had great difficult at judging distance in the empty vastness of New Mexico, it can’t be more than two miles from that tank farm to Gibson Boulevard, which was then the northern boundary of the base. Anderson Boulevard is only a short walk (four or five blocks) further. If there really has been as much fuel that leaked into the ground over the years as the AF has claimed, it really hasn’t migrated that far in the 30 or 40 years since the leak presumably first occurred. The fuel is obviously degrading faster than it is migrating. Let’s hope so anyway. Personally, if we someday buy a retirement home in the Mesa del Sol development south of Albuquerque, I would be more concerned about the carcasses of all the sheep and the low level radioactive and chemical waste that were buried in the Sandia Corporation landfill in the Fifties and Sixties than I would of this fuel spill. By then, the hydrocarbons will be long gone. Hydrocarbons degrade rapidly. Some of the stuff that was put in this landfield reguires more time.

The best way to fix it is by degradation, and it is degrading. Petroleum compounds are not permanent in the environment. They degrade rapidly. To be realistic, the story is not going to end tomorrow. Environmental pollution just don’t end that quickly. Cleanup takes time; and, if the process is hurried beyond the normal rate of Mother Nature, it is costly.

I am very interested in the quality of the New Mexico groundwater, especially around Albuquerque because I am very interested in someday retiring in the Mesa del Sol development at the end of University Boulevard southwest of the base and the airport, just as I am very interested in the quality of the Arkansas groundwater since I have worked for the past 36 years in the development of analytical methods for the generation of the necessary data and the generation of the data to document the extent of the problem.