[Updates] Kirtland Air Force Base Jet Fuel spill

[jimmckay at mckay-assoc.net]

Hello everyone,

Jim McKay here (new member).  I attended your last Thurs' Winnings get
together, chatted w/a few of you about what I'm up to, why I was there. 
I'd like to say this will be brief, but it's impossible to impart this
in a few words, so here it goes...

I am 1/2 of a 501c registered non-profit here in Albuquerque: Citizen
Action New Mexico (CANM).  My colleague and CANM Executive Director for
nearly 8 years is: Dave McCoy.  I'll describe more of Dave's/my efforts
later, but long and short: CANM has been in the belly of the beast of
very very critical water matters, long unattended and largely ignored by
most everyone, which are critical to Albuquerque now, more so in the
future.  

We are simply, running out of water... and all aspects of that are
cascading into larger unfolding problems: the more delay, the worse they
get, until a whole lot of things begin to change, and fast.  Yesterday
is too soon.

The purpose of this email is:

a) describe the problem, keeping it local to Albuquerque (actually a
statewide issue)... since that's where we're all at and, so much wasted
time may be avoided by fixing what's broken here, rather then sitting on
our butts like everyone else, commenting on what's wrong "over there"
somewhere.  When it's all said and done, that ("over there") actually is
source of the problem.

b) describe what we (CANM and handfull of others) have done in last few
years, why it's made a difference, what we've learned from that and how
learning that my be taught and expanded so that enough people here in
out magnificent mile high city get with it... determine our course here,
rather then leave decisions and planning to others "over there"
somewhere who are still fighting the cold war all these years after it
ended.  We can win this battle.  

c) My vision of the Open Source Web Portal project, how it would
look/what it would do/how it can be used, as a tool to bring more people
on board.  Given our limited resources (2 guys, funding our own work),
getting this portal up in real time is taking me far too long (I'll
explain later).  So after points a/b, I'm hoping some of you folks will
"catch a vision" of it, pause and consider it all, with an eye towards
making a *commitment* to bringing this about (portal) as a GNU licensed
open source project available to other communities, more or less
victimized by the same consequences of perceived ignorance you'll
understand later in this email.  If I explain well, the whole thing may
begin to come together for you.  

Ok, let's get on with it.

.....

Point a) Explained:  

At the risk of explaining the obvious to some of you, I don't want to
assume anything... so a bit about how you and everyone else here gets
their water, where it comes from, and what's going on behind the scenes
in a frantic effort which water managers keep "secret" (they don't want
to "scare you") to ensure they are able to continue having water come
out of your sink and shower faucets.

+/- 500 feet below every single person who lives here, is a vaaaaast
aquifer (underground body of water).  It is not homogenous (big lake),
rather that water shares it's space "down there" with different
combinations of rock and sand... sort of a maze.  

Scattered all over Albuquerque are "clusters" of "pumping stations"
(PS), which are wells into this aquifer, pulling water out from below
and distributing that water to peoples homes, businesses and all the
rest.  We all rely upon it, consciously or otherwise.  This aquifer is
ABQ's primary water supply: look around... we're a mile high city, it's
the water gifted us... it's more or less all we got, there's no more on
the way.

A little more about this aquifer and ABQ: over recent decades, some very
good and competent people responsable for futuer planning to ensure a
secure/safe supply going forward, embarked and completed a statewide
(really from here north) infrastructure which does a few things.  I want
to describe that briefly, because it's part of this puzzle.  Or to put
in another way, all this stuff is inter-connected, all though too few
people seem to comprehend this in real time.

"Recharge" is a term used by hydro-geologists, to describe how an
aquifer such as ours, is replenished with water, "replienished" really
meaning "off setting" or "replacing" water pumped up to the surface and
used by all.  Recharge occurs dynamically in many ways, *when* water is
flowing to do it.  Runoff from the Sandias soaks into the ground,
gravity pulls it down through the soil in various places, and that water
makes it's way back down to the Aquifer.  At the same time, when the Rio
Grande had meaningful flows, *that* water in part, soaked into the
ground below and on it's banks, similarly making it's way down to the
aquifer.  

Etc. etc... you get the idea.  

Right here, I want to inject this: We (state, entire southwest
especially) is in... *severe* long term drought.  Rocords are not
comprehensive, but many of those who study available records now saying
our drought conditions are the most severe in New Mexico's recorded
history.  Snow levels in our North have been progressively leaner for
some years, thus less runoff, then less water into the Rio Grande, then
less "recharge" to our aquifer.  Same w/Sandi runoff: practically no
runoff these recent years, again... very very little "recharge" from the
Sandias.  

Ocal rainfall... same thing: we've gotten a bit more this last month or
so, some folks consider it a blessing (it is, a small one), but that
rain remains far below seasonal averages here, utterly insufficient to
make a dent in this tilting equilibruium by which our aquifer's natural
recharge sources have been "cut off", so to speak.

To drive this condtion home a bit more profoundly: going back around a
decade, hydrology soil sampling (eg: a measure of water in soil... how
"wet" it is) in New Mexico compiled as an average for the state as a
whole, was around 11-12%.  These last few years, 1.5% has been above
average.  The ground is... dry.  And in case this isn't obvious, this
scant ground hydrology contributes greatly to our (and west US
especiallY) increasingly earlier in the season, bigger/hotter/more
destructive forest fires.  We've had records in our state just this
year: The huge, multiple Hemus fires, several new Santa Fe, couple more
down south: all hotter, bigger, more destructive of forest.  The drought
has synergistic affects, whether we like it or not: more cotigiuous dry
seansons, means progressively drier soil, which progressively deprives
(we'll keep it to) forests of needed water, thus progressively making
those trees up there less healthy and dry, compounding in these bigger
fires we see each year.

Ok again, just o bring the point home: water shortages whether we like
it or not, evident everywhere, it's all connected, and there's not new
water coming to us from anywhere... just the opposite.

A bit more about this statewide infrastructure all our tax $$ went to
build, which most folks here know little or nothing about.   


Quite some years ago, ABQ/Bernalillo water planning and distribution
authorities... seeing a growing ABQ and projected (then) drier seasons,
conceived of and did a nice job planning, financing and building what's
known as the: Chama River (or diversion) Project.  In short, this is it:
New Mexico has many above ground reservoirs in the north... in general
CHAMA area and beyond, which traditionally were under used (most of
cattle/dairy and farmers had accessible water from below them).  These
reservoirs, on average, lost about a third of their post-snow-runoff
(their "recharge") to evaporation.  Collectively for all those
reservoirs, a lot of water.

The Chama project in a nutshell, built infrastructure to "bring" a lot
of that water down to ABQ, and "inject" it into the aquifer, the idea
being to save what had been evaporated water, right under all our feet. 
1/3 of all that water, over some years... "recharging" our aquifer.  A
good plan, and well executed by those officials charged with doing so.

Also note: this project was financed by +/- $300m in municipal Bonds...
an awful lot for our locale (would be a pittance in California).  Doing
this knocked our credit rating down a notch (AAA >> AA).  

To summarize: A lot of money for water planning, that CHAMA water is not
flowing and recharging ABQ's aquifer now... whether one believes or
doesn't the climate change thing, the end result is the same: Our
aquifier's health is threatened, and it's replenishment entirely
uncertain.  To count on that changin... eg: more water in future years
w/out well provisioning for that not happening, we (CANM and others)
believe to be somewhere beyond fool-hearty, yet...

Statewide, there are water shortages and erupting water wars: Carlsbad,
greater Las Cruces area, dairy/cattle farmers in the north losing their
herds directly attributable to drought... yet little is changing
anywhere, particularly amongst those "faceless" officials deciding how
resources (money let's say) is distibuted and apportioned, for
particular purposes.  More on this later, but this particular issue is
at the heart of the matter: other people out of site are funding 99% +
of public $$ which flow into ABQ/Los Alamos (for purposes I'm laying out
here), and as you will see later, this "inertia" is literally insane
(not same) while guaranteeing these severe consequences amongst us all
continue to compound it this doesn't change.  Again, more on that later.
 

Ok, I need to describe another "slice of the pie" locally, all going on
at the same time, similarly our of the entirety of Albuquerque public's
awareness and common sense... both individually and thus collectively. 
Which brings us to the Kirtland AFB jet fuel spill, which I will now
describe.

Summary: Over the past +/- 60 years, Kirtland "leaked" (we call it a
"gusher") massive volumes of jet fuel into the ground below the base. 
The leaks (3 documented, probably more) "sprung" from pipes delivering
jet fuel from rail cars (tankers" offloading it, a pipe running +/- 3/4
of a mile to "holding tanks" used to fuel Kirtland aircraft.  This pipe
was about 3 feet undergound, covered with river rock and dirt on the
surface.  The Air Force has had since the '40's a manual called: , which
as part of maintaining their bases required pressure testing of these
pipes (checking for leaks) on a 1 & 5 year schedule (basic &
comprehensive pressure testing).  There is no record of Kirtland doing
these checks, ever... until about 2007.  

During that time,here's what happened: given our (CANM) limited
resources we can't nail it exactly, but... the established science of
measuring fluid (given viscosity... thickness) through a given
consistincy of soil (sand, rocks, mixture of them in various
granularity) can establish working hi/low estimates telling us how long
it took (how many years) for the entire 3d cube of dirt underneath
Kirtland to become saturated with Jet fuel... to the point where, like a
sponge dipped in your kitchen sink and removed dripping water because it
can't hold anymore, this describes all that dirt under Kirtland 500 feet
down: SATURATED.

This condition occurred approx. 16-18 years after initial leak (begun
+/- 1955, the year I was born) sprung.  Knowing that, the bottom of that
"sponge" began leaching into our aquifer.

The long story of the ensuing 30-40 years: there is a +/- 2 x 3/4 mile
of this stuff, heading east/north east from the base, 500 feet below
most residents in ABQ South East (east of San Mateo).  This stuff is
hugely toxic, causes massive digestive tract organ (kidney/liver)
failure, cancer, and other bizarre malignancies.  

It is expanding in directions mentioned, it's depth below the aquifer
surface is unknown, and it is approaching the nearest municipal pumping
stations on it's "journey" to contaminate the only drinking water we've
got, in our mile high city in the sky.

This spill is estimated to be 24 million gallons by local EPA (New
Mexico Environment Deptartment or NMED) hydro-geologist William Moates.
See here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/23/kirtland-air-force-base-spill_n_1537913.html

There's a story within a story in that tidbit, sililar to what keeps
this thing secret and similar 









--

Kind Regards,
Jim McKay


    "You can't have a baptism without any water."

     Werner