Editorial: Fuel cleanup strategy can’t shift with staffing

In November, the New Mexico Environment Department said new tests suggested the Kirtland Air Force Base fuel spill — decades in the making — had reached equilibrium and that the risk of it contaminating drinking water wells beneath southeast Albuquerque was “relatively small.”

Four months later, the department said the most dangerous part of the contamination plume may be still moving toward Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority wells.

The 180-degree change was not prompted by new groundwater tests, or new scientific methods for addressing underground contamination, or new results from the Air Force’s ongoing effort to suck vapors from the spill out of the ground and burn them off.

But by a new guy in charge of the Environment Department’s Resource Protection Division.

Then-chief Jim Davis told the water utility last fall that the spill was no longer spreading through the groundwater. Then he retired.

Now acting division chief Thomas Skibitski says the most dangerous part of the plume is still headed to the utility’s wells and the Air Force needs to ratchet up its monitoring and cleanup.

The lack of a scientific basis for that switch is particularly troubling because unlike pumping out and burning off vapors, other proposals such as pumping out and treating contaminated groundwater require putting that treated water somewhere. In the river? On southeast Albuquerque lawns? Back into the aquifer? Into a new line of bottled water called Plume?

Kirtland base commander Col. John Kubinec has said the Air Force “will continue to work with the New Mexico Environment Department to determine their expectations and ensure we are in compliance.”

But consistency is needed. These aren’t the kind of plans you can or should change at the drop of a hat unless there is an urgent need based on clear science.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.