AFCEE subject matter expert set to retire July 30

  • Published
  • By Jennifer Schneider
  • AFCEE Public Affairs
LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  The Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment will be losing a long-time employee and Air Force subject matter expert July 30 when Dr. Javier Santillan retires after almost 18 years of federal service.

Santillan, who has been with AFCEE since October 1993, has been the "go-to" person for issues involving environmental remediation system design, construction and optimization. During his tenure with the organization, he has served in several areas within the AFCEE Technical and Environmental Restoration divisions.

"I came in as a chemist in 1993," Santillan said. "In 1995, I was transferred to the hydrogeology group where I was a hydro geologist until 1997. At that time I started working in technology transfer and became an environmental scientist. It was then that I started doing optimization studies."

While with AFCEE, he has been heavily involved in setting and developing the standards and elements of environmental restoration program optimization, a comprehensive and systematic review of an installation's current and planned cleanup activities to protect human health and the environment while minimizing risk and associated costs.

His efforts at streamlining and optimizing remediation paid off in 2003, when he was on the remediation program optimization team awarded the Secretary of Defense Environmental Award. The award acknowledged cleanup efforts at the Arctic Surplus Salvage Yard in Fairbanks, Alaska. He assisted the Defense Logistics Agency in transforming a privately owned, contaminated scrap-yard into a viable industrial site.

The team recommended changes to the Environmental Protection Agency's 1995 Record of Decision for the site, effectively saving the Department of Defense over $30 million while cutting the cleanup time in half. The efforts also resulted in the EPA removing the site from the National Priorities List.

Santillan, who holds a doctorate in soils chemistry and irrigation engineering, developed an interest in his chosen career field in 1968.

"I was working for a chemistry degree and was hired by a water treatment plant to do research on wastewater treatment," he said. "In the late 1960s, people were still using detergents with a lot of phosphates. The phosphates promoted algae growth in the lakes, which would kill fish. We wanted to find a natural way to remove phosphates. We knew from chemistry that calcium and phosphor form a very insoluble material - bones are made out of it. So if we could pass the wastewater through calcium carbonate, we could remove the phosphorous."

This interest in environmental remediation drew him to AFCEE, he said, and one of the things he has enjoyed while with AFCEE is the freedom to work independently.

"They've always allowed me to develop the projects that I wanted to," he said. "They may not necessarily have agreed it was the best thing to do, but they put up with me. I'd say that most of the time, it worked."

Upon retirement, Santillan plans to start a consulting company in San Antonio.