Environmentalists call it the largest threat to a city's drinking water supply in history, as much as 24 million gallons of jet fuel - or twice the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill - seeping into an underground aquifer and steadily toward this drought-stricken city's largest and most pristine water wells.
But more than 12 years after the toxin-laden plume from a 40-year underground pipe leak was discovered at Kirtland Air Force Base, estimates of its size and its threat to the water supply of New Mexico's largest city keep growing, less than half a million gallons have been pumped out of the ground, the Air Force is two years away from finalizing a cleanup plan and local officials are still arguing about whether the spill is something they need to get involved with.
"We're pretty soon going to be swimming in this stuff, " Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Board member Rey Garduno said at a recent hearing held shortly after the New Mexico Department of Environment acknowledged the size of the spill could be as much as 24 million gallons, or three times previous estimates.
He called the spill a "traveling tsunami."
Although no one can really say how soon the plume might hit well fields, other board members remain confident the cleanup is in good hands.
"The good news is that Uncle Sam owns this, not some defunct railroad company," said board member Wayne Johnson, noting top Pentagon officials have assured state and local officials they would take full responsibility for cleanup.
Still, in a state where the nuclear bomb was developed and officials and environmentalists have fought for years for federal funding to clean up radioactive waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Kirtland's neighbor, Sandia National Laboratory, Uncle Sam's word is little reassurance to some.
"We are really running out of time on this," said Dave McCoy, executive director of the watchdog group Citizen Action New Mexico. "If this was above ground and you could see it, there would be squawking about it all the way to Canada."
The spill was first discovered in 1999 when the Air Force noticed a pool of fuel coming up out of the ground at its old aircraft fuel storage center, which dates back to the 1950s. Air Force officials say the fuel was leaking from an underground pipe for at least 40 years as tests on elements in the plume - which contains the cancer-causing Benzyne and other harmful toxins - show it dates back to at least the 1970s.
While fuel tanks now have gauges and modern technology that allow officials to more closely monitor how much fuel goes in and out, Kirtland civil engineer Brent Wilson says the leak dates back to the days when "the way to measure was to take a long stick and dip into the tank."
Initially, the Air Force estimated the spill to be about 100,000 gallons. But as more than 130 monitoring wells have been dug around the site, estimates on the size and severity of the spill have continued to grow.
In 2007, fuel was found 500 feet down in the aquifer that provides Albuquerque half of its drinking water. This spring, the state geologist who initially estimated the spill at 8 million gallons told McCoy he now thinks it could be as much as 24 million gallons. And a new report from the Air Force indicates rising groundwater levels have further exacerbated the problem, swamping some of the spill beneath the water table.
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