Community field trip leads to better understanding of Kirtland plume

  • Published
  • By Jim Fisher
  • Kirtland AFB Public Affairs
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  Concerned citizens, local residents, geology buffs and students from the University of New Mexico and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology joined local agencies engaged in cleaning up the Kirtland Bulk Fuels Facility leak April 18 to learn more about the science behind the assessment and cleanup. The group visited environmental cleanup sites around Albuquerque and geologically illustrative sites on and near Kirtland.

The field trip was a collaboration between the Air Force, the New Mexico Environmental Department, U.S. Geological Survey and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, the Air Force agency heading up remediation efforts. Participants toured several sites to help provide hands-on examples of geological and hydrological research; assessment and an overall context for the BFF project, according to Jill Turner, a member of the NMED's Office of the Secretary.

"The purpose of [the field trip] was to demonstrate that there's a lot going on in this area; this isn't just a problem in Albuquerque, this is a problem all over and each site is very different," Turner said."... that makes a huge difference in how you deal with a site, and makes a huge difference in how the site behaves, how the contaminants behave."

The collaboration on the event mirrored the collaboration ongoing in the remediation efforts, Turner noted.

"The idea behind these field trips is also similar to what we have been doing with the new public meetings," she said. "We are wanting to work very closely with not only the Air Force, but with the other agencies that are tasked in dealing with environmental issues in this area. We've been pooling our intellectual resources and our remediation resources together, and this is something we have going on throughout the year."

This collaboration anchors an assessment and remediation plan that has recently seen 11 new monitoring wells put into operation around the contamination plume which stretches from Kirtland to Louisiana Boulevard north of Gibson.

The field trip took place in the wake of good news from these monitoring wells.

According to Dr. Adria Bodour, AFCEC's lead scientist on the project, seven of the monitoring wells showed no signs of contamination and officials now believe the plume isn't moving toward key drinking wells. This has altered conclusions about its shape of the plume.

"This is good news. It changed the whole plume profiling and contour, and because of that, we now have an even better grasp of the flow pattern," Bodour said. "We found out we've got a lot of non-detects so it has changed the plume shaping, so that really gives us bookends for where this contaminate is migrating."

Bodour noted, however, that this recent good news won't slow down remediation efforts.

AFCEC is installing the first of a series of extraction wells, with three more to follow by year's end. The extraction wells will enable a pump and treat process to clean groundwater. This is in addition to vapor extraction and bio-remediation efforts already in progress.

Marea Cheval, a local property owner and resident, joined the field trip due to her concerns about soil and drinking water contamination.

She said she was "heartened" by the collaboration taking place between experts and agencies.

"I'm just very hopeful that it could be addressed with this many people and this much education involved, and it seems like there's cooperation among the various groups, which is my biggest hope -- that everybody would cooperate on this project," she said.
Getting a close-up look at the science behind the effort gave Cheval a better understanding of the remediation process, she said.

"Learning about what the soil is like here is helping me see why the water flows one way and why the plume might flow another," she said. "It's not just going down toward the river like I thought, but it's a very complicated project. The wells are there to get samples and help map out what's going on with the plume because it's not the same in every area."

BFF officials are looking forward to marking the installation of the pump and treat facility on Kirtland tentatively slated for late June. For more information, visit Kirtland's environmental page at http://www.kirtland.af.mil/environment.asp.