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Status Update for the Kirtland Air Force Base Bulk Fuels Facility Fuel Leak Corrective Action Activities
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The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) released their "2017 Strategic Plan" for the Kirtland Air Force Base (KAFB) Bulk Fuels Facility (BFF) Leak earlier this year, incorporating three strategies to protect the Water Authority's drinking water supply in the area of the contamination plume. The strategies include implementing a robust monitoring and wellhead protection program, deploying multiple cleanup strategies simultaneously and sequentially, and to meet or exceed all requirements for public involvement.
The Air Force and NMED recently announced that "capture" of the dissolved phase EDB plume has been demonstrated through water-level and plume concentration data collected during 2016. AFCEC's contractor, EA Engineering, performed an evaluation on the data following a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency protocol for capture data analyses, concluding that the existing capture wells are effectively influencing the EDB plume to move toward the extraction wells and away from the Water Authority's production wells. This is despite the forced temporary shut-down of one of the extraction wells due to biofouling. As of mid-March, over 150 million gallons of EDB contaminated water have been treated through the groundwater treatment facility (GWTS).
Also, an additional extraction well will be made operational this year, making a total of four operating cleanup wells sending water to the recently expanded GWTS for treatment. Additional interim measures will be implemented this year that will address the concentrated contamination below the source of the leak, including an in situ biodegradation pilot test of the remediation of EDB in the light nonaqueous phase plume below KAFB, and bioventing that will address the residual fuel in the vadose zone.
In addition, the U.S. Air Force Civil Engineering Center (AFCEC) and Kirtland Air Force Base (KAFB) re...
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