From what I am reading on the Kirtland website, the Air Force is doing something. It may be 13 years since the leak was discovered, but it may be over 50 years since it began. It was likely going on when I was biking by that fuel depot back in the sixties. Since the leak has occurred for so many years, there is a limit on the speed with which it can be cleaned up. If thousands of holes were punched into the ground all over Albuquerque, and every drop of ground water and fuel were pumped out all at once, it would only excerbate the problem and cause more pollution. The extent of the pollution has taken time. It will take more time to adequately clean it up.

Albuquerque is not alone with this problem. Ground water is being contaminated all across this country (and much of the world), not from the leaking of jet fuel, but from millions of old and leaking gasoline, kerosene, diesel, and other hydrocarbon tanks. It is an expensive proposition to clean this mess up. The EPA holds many service station owner’s feet to the fire to “bite the bullet” and clean up their own messes, but there are thousands (if not millions) of old fuel tanks the owners of which have disappeared or are unknown, just sitting and leaking steadily and silently. I’m thinking of Ott’s underground tank in Coal Fire as just one example. It will take time to clean up this mess, and it can’t be done on the basis of $0.25 per gallon fuel. I suggest holding the Air Force’s (and DOD’s) feet to the fire, but we can’t expect them to clean up the extent of the mess in only a few years. The problem is too big for that.

i believe you!http://www.marmil.org

The site in Lubbock must have been cleaned up before the passage of the Clean Air Act. Air pollution is much worse and more difficult to control than water pollution. Filters can be placed on home water faucits easily. It is more difficult to make everyone wear filter packs on their backs and gas masks over their faces. Let’s not make the problem worse by pumping out the pollutants and indiscriminately burning them in the atmosphere, making all those pollutants airborne for would-be bikers like my self to breathe while struggling to pedal up the next mountainside. Mother Nature can do the job much more efficiently as long as we just set back and monitor the progress and give assistance where needed.

Yes! Vapors, refinery gases, and natural gases are burned off at refineries every day, but no hazardous gases can be burned without appropriate safeguards required by the Clean Air Act. Even the natural “sour gas” from the wells has to be scrubbed when it is flared off. Chemical scrubbing is an expensive process. The maintenance of a “clean” environment is not a simple process, and it is not cheap. It can not be done with $0.25 a gallon gas at the pump. The Chinese, the Russians, and the Saudis are finding in the 21st century what the American oil companies found out in the 20th century that refinery gases are severely polluting of the air and the water. Most are “sour”; that is, they are acidic with hydrogen sulfide (rotten eggs), which people don’t like to breathe, even at very low concentrations. At higher concentrations, they don’t worry about it because they will be dead.

My original point is correct. Stop the spill; monitor what has already been spilled; and, if possible, let Mother Earth take care of it in Her own sweet way. If the spill was to big for Mother Earth to take care of it, then extraordinary measures must be taken, but let Mother Earth do Her job first because She does it better.