ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — State environment and Kirtland Air Force Base officials are pumping 70,000 gallons of contaminated water from the aquifer that feeds new Mexico’s largest city, an attempt to clean up a huge, underground jet fuel spill.

The fuel came from what officials believe was a 40-year leak from underground pipes at a Kirtland aircraft fuel loading facility. It was discovered in 1999, and officials are still trying to figure out how to clean it up before it hits city water wells.

Officials began pumping water from the aquifer on Wednesday and filtering it in mobile tanks. The test will determine if this is a viable method for cleaning up the spill and see what happens to the aquifer when a large amount of water is removed.

The goal is to pump more than 1 million gallons before the end of November.

Filtered water from the test will be used on the base, probably to water grounds. But officials say they are unsure what they will do if the m proves viable and large amounts of water are pumped from the aquifer. One potential option is to use it to recharge the aquifer.

The spill has been estimated as large as 24 million gallons, or twice the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The plume has moved to within 4,000 feet of one city well, prompting the state earlier this year to order more aggressive action by the Air Force to try to get the toxins out of the aquifer.

Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn emphasized that Wednesday’s test was very preliminary, but said the cleanup is the department’s No. 1 priority.

“We simply cannot allow this spill to contaminate Albuquerque’s water,” he said, noting the effort has just begun. “We will continue to push the Air Force to move at a more aggressive pace.”

Kirtland Air Force Base Installation Commander Col. Tom Miller called it a complex issue but said the Air Force is fully committed to resolving it.

Source: SFGate.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

 Study:  Nitrogen Remains in Soils

 Gazette Note:  This important study demonstrates the long-term implications of our excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers.  Nitrate contamination of drinking water is a serious issue, and the study shows that what we do now is polluting the drinking water of future generations. --Hardly Waite.

Nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops lingers in the soil and leaks out as nitrate towards groundwater much longer than previously thought, scientists in France and at the University of Calgary discovered in a new study.

 

Thirty years after synthetic nitrogen fertilizer had been applied to crops in 1982, about 15 per cent of the fertilizer nitrogen still remained in soil organic matter, the scientists found.

 

After three decades, approximately 10 per cent of the fertilizer nitrogen had seeped through the soil towards the groundwater and will continue to leak in low amounts for at least another 50 years.

 

Nitrate is one of the most common groundwater contaminants in rural areas. It is regulated in drinking water primarily because excess levels can cause methaemoglobinemia, or "blue baby syndrome," which decreases the ability of blood to carry oxygen around the body.

 

The study was led by researcher Mathieu Sebilo at the Universite Pierre et Marie Currie in Paris, France, and by Bernhard Mayer in the University of Calgary's Department of Geoscience, and included several research organizations in France.

 

Their paper, "Long-term fate of nitrate fertilizer in agricultural soils," was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America.

 

The findings show that losses of fertilizer nitrogen towards the groundwater occur at low rates but over many decades, says Mayer, professor of geochemistry and head of the Applied Geochemistry Group.

That means it could take longer than previously thought to reduce nitrate contamination in groundwater, including in aquifers that supply drinking water in North America and elsewhere, he says.

 

"There's a lot of fertilizer nitrogen that has accumulated in agricultural soils over the last few decades which will continue to leak as nitrate towards groundwater," Mayer says.

 

Canada and the U.S. regulate the amount of nitrate allowed in drinking water. In the 1980s, surveys by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey showed that nitrate contamination had probably impacted more public and domestic water supply wells in the U.S. than any other contaminant.

 

Mayer is an internationally recognized expert in the use of stable isotopes to track contaminants in the environment.

 

The French-University of Calgary study is the first that tracks, using stable isotope "fingerprinting," the fate of fertilizer nitrogen remaining in a soil zone over several decades. The research team used a stable isotope of nitrogen, N-15, as a tracer to track fertilizer nitrogen applied in 1982 to sugar beet and winter wheat crops on a pair of two-metre-square plots at a site in France.

 

Over the 30-year study, the researchers measured the amount of N-15 labeled fertilizer nitrogen taken up by plants and they quantified the amount of fertilizer nitrogen remaining in the soil.

 

The novel aspect of their study was that they subsequently determined the long-term fate of this fertilizer nitrogen 'pool' retained in the soil. Their measurements of seepage water from locations two metres deep in the soil revealed the amount of fertilizer nitrate leaking towards the groundwater.

The team found that 61 to 65 per cent of the N-15 fertilizer applied in 1982 was taken up by the sugar beet and wheat plants over the 30-year study.

 

However, 32 to 37 per cent of the fertilizer nitrogen remained in the soil organic matter in 1985 or three years after application, while 12 to 15 per cent still lingered in the soils after three decades.

Between eight to 12 per cent of the fertilizer nitrogen applied in 1982 had leaked in the form of nitrate toward groundwater during the 30 years, and will continue to leak at low rates "for at least another five decades, much longer than previously thought," the study says.

 

The scientists predict that about 15 per cent of the initially applied fertilizer nitrogen will be exported from the soils towards the groundwater over a time span of almost one century after the 1982 fertilizer application.

 

"If nitrate keeps leaking into the groundwater for decades after fertilizer application, than it will be more difficult to reduce nitrate contamination of groundwaters in a timely fashion," says Mayer.

Mayer speculates that if the same research were done in Alberta, the findings would be similar in terms of fertilizer uptake by plants and nitrogen retention in the soils, although Alberta's comparatively dry climate and different geology might slow the rate of nitrate seeping towards the groundwater.

 

Source: Stormwater

 

What Are Fiberglass Mineral Tanks Made Of?

by Pure Water Annie

Good , sincere, heartfelt information from the Occasional’s Technical Department.

Editor’s Note:  This article is adapted from a longer piece that appeared in the Pure Water Occasional for May 2011. – Hardly Waite.

The water filter pictured below is built with a conventional fiberglass mineral tank. In water treatment, these tanks are used to build virtually all filters and water softeners. They’re called “mineral tanks” because the treatment media you put in them, whether it is carbon, Birm, water softener resin,  calcite, or any other granular water treatment medium, is collectively referred to as “mineral.”

In the vernacular, the tanks are made of a substance called “fiberglass.”

When someone asks what a filter or softener tank is made of,  short answer is simply to say “fiberglass” and be done with it,  although this really isn’t true.

According to a leading manufacturer, Structural, what we often refer to as “fiberglass” tanks do in fact have a band of fiberglass reinforcement on the outside. The inner shell of the tank, however, is made of Polyethylene, Polypropylene, PVDF. ECTFE (aka HALAR), FFT. and “around 50 other custom materials.”

The tanks have certification by the following agencies: NSF, WQA, and Druckbehalterverordung (German).

So, should you worry about drinking or bathing in water that has been exposed to fifty to sixty plastics? Should the fact that the tank has certification by such prestigious approving agencies as NSF and WQA ease your concerns?

I can’t answer that one for you.  Annie can’t solve all your problems. The alternative to the sixty plastics is a stainless steel tank that costs ten times as much, does not work as well, and probably has its own set of health issues that haven’t been discovered yet. Our experience has been that in spite of popular mythology, stainless tanks are not as “leak-proof” as fiberglass. “Fiberglass” mineral tanks have been around a long time and no one has yet shown that they do any harm. Myself, I’m at home with them. But Pure Water Annie does not know everything.