A national scandal over groundwater pollution at U.S. Air Force bases (AFB) has come to a head in New Mexico. Outstanding reporting online by Laura Paskus at New Mexico Political Report about pollution at Holloman AFB near Alamogordo and by Amy Linn at Searchlight New Mexico about a particularly gruesome example of contaminated water under Cannon AFB near Clovis are literal horror stories to water-starved New Mexicans.
If the groundwater disasters at Holloman and Cannon were isolated phenomena, it would be hideous enough, but they are not. They’re part of a seemingly ubiquitous pattern of environmental carelessness and abuse at most all of the nation’s Air Force Bases, as far as my research can tell. Groundwater contaminated by the Air Force with jet fuel, fire retardant, industrial solvents and other carcinogenic liquid debris is particularly troubling in the arid Southwest, where groundwater has always been thought to be the freshwater backup of last resort.
With the largest jet fuel spill in the nation at Albuquerque’s Kirtland AFB, at some 24 million gallons near the sweet spot of the city’s aquifer, the revelations of huge amounts of cancer-causing pollution in the water under Holloman AFB, concern over threats to New Mexico’s dairy industry from carcinogen-polluted water under Cannon AFB and reasonable suspicions about contamination in the groundwater at the decommissioned Walker Air Force site three miles south of Roswell, not to mention Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories and their nuclear R and D, many environmentally conscious New Mexicans consider their state to be a military sacrifice zone.
Walker AFB, which was closed in 1963, was a center for training pilots and crew to fly B29 and B-50A Superfortresses during the Cold War. Airborne fuel tankers and other aircraft were also stored at Walker and operated from there. It’s impossible to imagine that fuels and fire retardants and other military waste did not end up in the soils and in the Roswell Basin aquifer under the base. Some 27 miles down the road from Roswell at Lake Arthur is a former Atlas Missile Silo site, which in 2009 was pronounced ready for “reuse” after contamination clean up. But what does “reuse” mean? Fit for an auto parts junk yard or for human habitation?
The Air Force and the media like to focus on one kind of pollutant in revelations such as these, like fire retardant at Cannon or fuel additives at Kirtland. But that’s a distraction. Any petrochemical, any poison, in specific parts of any aquifer renders that part worthless, often even with remediation. If the aquifer happens to be relatively still, it remains more or less contained in a plume. If the aquifer is dynamic, like the Oglala Aquifer under Clovis, pollution tends to move around, often very swiftly.
The pollution catastrophe at Cannon has already destroyed what was considered the best local dairy in Curry County, causing the euthanasia of some 4000 head of dairy cows and the ruination of a flourishing family business. I’m not sure anyone can tell, at the moment, how far or how fast the contamination can spread.
New Mexico is not alone as a zone of sacrifice in the Southwest. Last year, the Air Force tested groundwater around Davis-Monthan AFB five miles southeast of Tucson. It had already found pollutants in the aquifer under Luke AFB west of Phoenix and the decommissioned Williams AFB, a Superfund site east of Phoenix near Chandler, AZ. The Tucson water department was forced to shut down three drinking-water wells that supplied northwest Tucson when carcinogens from military waste were found in the water there. The immense Nellis AFB on the northeastern edge of Las Vegas has long been known to have a witches brew of carcinogens in its groundwater from nearly 80 years of use starting in 1929 and continuing through nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s. Hill AFB outside of Salt Lake City, UT, is the home of a Superfund cleanup of groundwater, as well. By some estimates, U.S. military bases account for nearly 150 Superfund sites across the country. And that does not include such disasters as the Kirtland AFB jet fuel spill, which for some unknown reason has not been designated a Superfund site.
One of the worst pollution situations in the Southwest is in Victorville, CA, in the Mojave desert in southwestern San Bernadino County at the decommissioned George AFB, which was made a Superfund site two years before its closing in 1992. Investigative journalists have thoroughly covered George’s tragic pollution legacy — the cancers, the ruined families and the incredibly dirty water filled with jet fuels, radioactive waste, fire retardant, pesticides and benzine, to name some of the worst contaminates. George’s clean-up history is one of procrastination, obfuscation, denial, foot dragging and ultimately long-term failure. The water under George AFB will probably never be fit for human consumption. Employees of the desert base routinely drank the water before it was a Superfund site and consider its contamination the underlying cause of an alarming number of cancers and other illnesses among George’s former workers.
Is George AFB the worst-case scenario? Will Kirtland AFB prove to be? Or will both prove to be representative examples of what’s to be found near or under every AFB in the Southwest, when the true story is revealed? Although I’m not a pessimist by nature, and even though what we know right now is horrifying, I fear we’ve yet to see the worst.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
(Image derived from photo by Troy Williams.)
I’m reminded of our old saying about activists having to hold a bake sale to pay for peace-building efforts while the military has billions at its disposal to pay for war. We’d be living in a much healthier world if money were diverted to clean up these scenes of dangerous pollution rather than to build a wall that every expert says isn’t needed on our southern border. Thank you, V.B., for consistently giving us the information we need and an analysis that helps us make sense of what is being perpetrated against us.
Very clear description of an enormous problem. You are definitely one of the Water Protectors.
I am always unclear as to how you can not be a pessimist by nature, in the face of the research you do. I think there is a certain philosophical semantic grand canyon there. However, your analyses are always spot on.
Humble thank yous’ , sir ..
The Kirtland AFB Jet Fuel Spill Secret Documents can be found at:
http://www.radfreenm.org
It just got posted.