Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Authority

Air Force: Not enough interest for public KAFB fuel spill board

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There isn’t enough community interest in the cleanup of the massive Kirtland Air Force Base jet fuel spill to merit the creation of a Restoration Advisory Board. That’s according to a memo sent out by the U.S. Air Force this Monday. Restoration Advisory Boards, or RABs, allow local governments and citizens to become more involved in environmental restoration issues at U.S. Department of Defense facilities. In the memo, Kirtland Commander Col. Eric Froehlich wrote that last year the executive director of Citizen Action, Dave McCoy, delivered a petition with 80 signatures, asking that the federal government create a RAB related to the jet fuel leak and cleanup.

Kirtland Air Force Base

The KAFB jet fuel spill cleanup is speeding up

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A massive new weapon has now deployed in the battle to clean up the Kirtland Air Force Base fuel leak: forty thousand pounds of granular activated carbon that is stripping aviation fuel constituents out of the contaminated water. At a cost of $14.2 million, the U.S. Air Force has built a system of three extraction wells, pipes and a 4,000-square-foot, full-scale treatment plant, complete with two metal vessels that each have 20,000 pounds of carbon, that has now cleaned 52 million gallons of water contaminated with ethylene dibromide. The full-scale treatment system became operational on December 31, 2015, and is now pumping and cleaning 400 gallons of water a minute, or 576,000 gallons a day. It has the capacity to treat 800 gallons a minute. The Air Force and the New Mexico Environment Department gave area residents a glimpse of the treatment system during a field trip to Kirtland on April 23.

Albuquerque Newsdesk

Air Force faces suit over jet fuel spill

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Residents of New Mexico announced their intention to sue the U.S. Air Force over the massive jet fuel spill at Kirtland Air Force Base. The New Mexico Environmental Law Center announced on Monday that the organization filed a notice of intent to sue the Air Force. Among those in the lawsuit are the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) and state senators Cisco McSorley and Mimi Stewart. Four other residents of New Mexico are clients. The notice of intent is required to give those who will be sued 90 days notice of the suit.