[CPEO-MEF] FUEL: Kirtland AFB (NM) cleanup

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Kirtland AFB working to clean up gas plume

By Stuart Dyson
KOB TV-4 News 4 (Albuquerque, NM)
January 6, 2011

The U.S. Air Force usually fights its battles in the sky - but they're 
fighting this one 500 feet underground, cleaning up contaminated water 
and saturated sand. The Air Force appears to finally be moving at full 
throttle to clean up a massive decades-old jet fuel leak that threatens 
some of Albuquerque's drinking water.

Scientists think jet fuel started leaking out of underground pipes at 
Kirtland Air Force Base back in the 1950's, an estimated 8 million 
gallons of it oozing into the soil and the groundwater by the time they 
discovered it in 1999. The fuel plume has seeped through sand and soil 
into the water table 500 feet below the surface, inching slowly 
northward beneath neighborhoods north of the base, near Gibson and San 
Mateo SE. The plume threatens to contaminate several city water wells in 
the Southeast Heights. For the Air Force, it's a moving target - a 
long-term mission with a $50 million dollar price tag that could go up 
in the years ahead.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S1912905.shtml?cat=500

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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