Sandia Labs, Kirtland AFB update public on environmental restoration work

Thirty years ago, Sandia National Laboratories had 300-some sites in New Mexico with contaminated groundwater.

Three contaminated groundwater sites remain today.

The U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense held a state-required semiannual meeting Tuesday in Albuquerque to update the public on environmental restoration work Sandia Labs and Kirtland Air Force Base are doing.

Much of the contamination being cleaned up by the entities dates back to a time before federal environmental regulations — when the labs and Air Force base were in operation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had not yet been established.

“All the DOE labs, they started after World War II, and it’s because of those activities starting from the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s,” said Jun Li, a Sandia Labs environmental professional. “(The) ’80s was the time that we had the federal (regulatory) laws.”

Now, the federal agencies work with New Mexico to clean up whatever contamination still remains from decades ago.

“I really do think DOE labs are really ahead of the curve, trying to clean up,” Li said, adding that weapons labs around the nation are tasked with cleaning up contamination from past activities.

The three groundwater sites Sandia is actively cleaning up or monitoring today cover parts of the Manzanita Mountains east of Albuquerque, as well as the north-central and west-central parts of Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia Labs, according to presentations on display.

All the sites have nitrate contamination, a naturally occurring and man-caused substance that, in high levels, poses risks to human health. The carcinogenic compound trichloroethylene, or TCE, was also present in some cases.

Sandia will continue monitoring all three sites, likely for decades, according to the labs. Officials say none of the contamination sites present risks to human health because the groundwater isn’t used for drinking purposes.

On the other side of the room, Kirtland Air Force Base had presentations on display for its five major active cleanup sites, which included groundwater and soil contamination, specifically for nitrate and TCE, and landfills.

One site in particular, located on the Air Force Base, is in the early phases of an investigation. U.S. Air Force engineer Begnaud Moayyad said the questions that need to be answered include figuring out what the contamination is, its source, how widespread it is, how toxic it is relative to drinking water standards and if it presents risks to human health.

Another flagged site, this one focused on soil contamination, exists on the northwestern part of Kirtland Air Force Base, near the Sunport. Contamination on the site, formerly used for aircraft movement and parking, potentially stemmed from the release of fuel, lubricants and degreasers, according to Kirtland.

The base identified the contamination in the ‘90s, not finding any excessive levels, but still treated the contamination, according to the Kirtland presentations. Cleanup operations took place from 1999 through 2019. The base stopped because it no longer detected contamination, said Darren Knight, a program manager at the U.S. Air Force Civil Engineer Center.

The New Mexico Environment Department in 2020 requested the base continue monitoring groundwater and vapor concentrations. Knight said Kirtland has already drilled two new groundwater wells and expects state approval to drill additional vapor monitoring wells.

“The reason why it takes so much time is because you have to follow a lot of regulations,” Knight said.