The Environmental Disaster You’ve Never Heard Of

The fighter jets and military planes that blast into the skies each day above Albuquerque’s Kirtland Air Force Base (KAFB) consume millions of gallons of jet fuel each year. In order to serve this fleet, the Air Force stores enormous amounts of fuel and distributes it throughout the base via a network of tanks, pipes and pumps. In the early 1950s, the base replaced leaking tanks and aging pipelines with a new fuels facility it promised would modernize and make more safe the handling and distribution of jet fuel. The facility received its first trainload of jet fuel and aviation gas in 1953. Almost immediately, and for the next 45 years, it has leaked jet fuel into the surrounding soil.

The “leak” continued, undetected, until 1992 when workers observed a huge surface plume in the soil surrounding the fuel facility. The Air Force largely ignored requests by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to investigate the plume’s source and extent and instead, in 1994, gave itself a waiver from conducting military-mandated tests of the facility pipeline. Under pressure from the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), the Air Force finally conducted pressure tests of the pipelines in 1999. They failed spectacularly. The added pressure blew massive holes in the pipeline. The test appeared to prove the pipes were leaking. In a comic/tragic, nothing-to-see-here moment in May 2000, Mark Holmes, a civilian project manager for Kirtland’s environmental unit, told the Albuquerque Journal that everything was fine: The 100,000 gallons of missing fuel could be explained by a simple accounting error. NMED staffer Dennis McQuillan, however, told the Journalthat if it were a 100,000 gallon spill, it “would be a big spill, one of the biggest” in state history.

For comparison's sake, the KAFB spill is larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which dumped more than 12 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, killing an estimated quarter-million seabirds, 3,000 otters, hundreds of harbor seals and bald eagles and nearly two dozen killer whales.

They were both wrong. In 2006 an Air Force contractor drilled an exploratory well in southeast Albuquerque’s Bullhead Park, just outside the base's northern boundary. He found four feet of jet fuel floating on top of the aquifer. Additional monitoring wells found a plume of jet fuel slithering northeast from the original spill location and well beyond the northern boundary of the base. Kirtland estimated the plume at between one and two million gallons, but NMED raised that estimate to eight million gallons. Two years later, with more monitoring and evidence of the true scale of the spill, NMED revised the estimate dramatically to 24 million gallons, an amount 240 times larger than the 2000 estimate.

For comparison's sake, the KAFB spill is larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which dumped more than 12 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, killing an estimated quarter-million seabirds, 3,000 otters, hundreds of harbor seals and bald eagles and nearly two dozen killer whales. The KAFB jet fuel spill—the Air Force calls it a “leak”—is the largest toxic contamination of an aquifer in US history, and it could be twice the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

The KAFB jet fuel spill—the Air Force calls it a “leak”—is the largest toxic contamination of an aquifer in US history, and it could be twice the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster. And that’s bad enough, but it’s the good news compared to what follows.

And that’s bad enough, but it’s the good news compared to what follows.

Unlike the crude oil in the Exxon Valdez disaster, jet fuel and aviation gas contain a variety of toxic chemical compounds, including benzene, toluene and various aliphatic hydrocarbons, and these are all found in the plume—in varying concentrations—at every depth. Among the toxic chemicals contaminating the aquifer, one poses the most serious threat to both human health and the challenge of remediation: ethylene dibromide or EDB.

The EPA banned the commercial and industrial use of ethylene dibromide more than 40 years ago. Prior to its ban, the US produced 300 million pounds of EDB annually, with most used as an additive in leaded gasoline. Every gallon of aviation gas included enough EDB to contaminate millions of gallons of drinking water. In addition, 20 million pounds of EDB was used each year as an agricultural fumigant. Nearly 40 crops were routinely sprayed with EDB. Farmworkers—often with little or no protective equipment—fumigated fruit and citrus trees. They sprayed it on stored grain and the milling equipment that made the bread that stocked grocery store shelves. They saturated soil with EDB after harvests.

Among the toxic chemicals contaminating the aquifer, one poses the most serious threat to both human health and the challenge of remediation: ethylene dibromide or EDB. ... The HERP index, a measure that translates cancer risks in rats to humans, ranks EDB as the most dangerous rodent carcinogen to human health.

When EDB is released into soils, it almost always makes its way into groundwater. It is highly soluble and stable and persists in soils and underground water. It’s hard to find and even harder (and more expensive) to get out. By the early 1970s, concerns about EDB’s risk to human health surfaced after laboratory tests of rodents identified it as a potent carcinogen and mutagen.

In 1973 the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued regulations that led to the reduced use of leaded gasoline—and thus EDB—but the agency continued to allow agricultural use of EDB. The National Cancer Institute first issued a notice on EDB in 1975, reporting that it induced cancer in laboratory animals. Following that warning, EPA conducted a six-year review, culminating in September 1983 when it suspended all agricultural uses of EDB pending further scientific study. Laboratory tests quickly confirmed previous reports that EDB caused cancer and reproductive disorders in laboratory animals. Meanwhile high concentrations of EDB were found in drinking water in California, Florida, Hawaii and Georgia. The EPA issued an emergency ban on all agricultural use of EDB in February 1984.

The agency determined the maximum safe level of EDB in drinking water—the level at which no adverse effects would likely occur—is zero. In other words, the EPA considers no amount of EDB in drinking water safe for human health. Despite EPA standards, NMED permits EDB in drinking water at levels at or below 50 parts per trillion (ppt).

In the wake of the ban, more studies examined EDB's effect on animals. In some laboratory animals, EDB is a reproductive toxin. It inhibits the ability of rats, rams and bulls to produce sperm, and it interrupts the fertility of fowl. It binds itself to DNA and rewrites genetic information causing mutation. It is a potent carcinogen in rats and mice. When exposed to skin, it produces widespread lesions and tumors; when given orally, tumors develop in the stomach and lungs. Inhalation results in tumors in the nasal cavity and circulatory system.

Current estimates suggest a plume of EDB-contaminated groundwater 1,000 feet wide and more than a mile long is moving northeast from the base; according to a 2009 KAFB memo, it's advancing as much as 385 feet per year. Most of that plume—80 percent of which is now beyond the boundary of the base—is headed directly for the Ridgecrest neighborhood.

Untold thousands of laboratory animals were killed by exposure to EDB; this, in order to show that EDB is fatal in high doses while low-level longterm exposure causes renal and liver failure, cancer and mutation. Its effect on humans is more difficult to determine. The HERP index, a measure that translates cancer risks in rats to humans, ranks EDB as the most dangerous rodent carcinogen to human health. Toxicologists differ on whether the data on human mortality to EDB is statistically significant.

A 1990 study by the California Department of Health Services found that citrus workers “had essentially a 100 percent chance of contracting cancer.” A 1984 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on deaths of two agricultural workers: One worker died of liver failure 12 hours after collapsing while cleaning inside an empty tank, found later to contain EDB residues; another worker died of renal failure 64 hours after trying to rescue the first worker. A 1980 mortality study of 161 workers employed at two EDB manufacturing plants—including one owned by Dow Chemical—identified a pattern of malignancies and exposure fatalities among workers, but also concluded mortality was lower than expected given human risk assumed by animal studies. In other words, EDB causes fatal renal and liver failure in high doses, and it's a human carcinogen in low-level, longterm exposure, but not at a rate greater than statistically expected.

NMED Environmental Health Division Director Tom Blaine ... [assured] attendees of a public meeting that KAFB will absolutely “remediate the site. This isn’t our first rodeo.” But there’s little strategy or past action to justify this confidence.

However, these studies were enough to convince the EPA to act. The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 required that the EPA determine safe levels of various chemical contaminants in drinking water. The agency determined the maximum safe level of EDB in drinking water—the level at which no adverse effects would likely occur—is zero. In other words, the EPA considers no amount of EDB in drinking water safe for human health. Despite EPA standards, NMED permits EDB in drinking water at levels at or below 50 parts per trillion (ppt). The most recent data from KAFB’s plume-monitoring wells find EDB concentrations in shallow wells on the base at concentrations of 240,000 ppt, a concentration nearly 5,000 times greater than the 50 ppt standard. Monitoring wells on and off base have found EDB in shallow, intermediate and deep wells at all depths in concentrations significantly higher than NMED’s standard.

The presence of EDB in the plume at such alarming concentrations reveals two inconvenient facts for the Air Force. First, it has made it more difficult for Kirtland to minimize the significance of the spill. At a public meeting last week, KAFB Colonel Jeff Lanning admitted that “fuel has been leaking for a long time,” and since the Air Force discontinued use of leaded aviation gas in 1975, the presence of EDB suggests the spill began “possibly as early as the 1950s.” Current estimates suggest a plume of EDB-contaminated groundwater 1,000 feet wide and more than a mile long is moving northeast from the base; according to a 2009 KAFB memo, it's advancing as much as 385 feet per year. Most of that plume—80 percent of which is now beyond the boundary of the base—is headed directly for the Ridgecrest neighborhood. The Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority operates a series of wells in the Ridgecrest area that pump so much water for the city that they produce a cone of depression that acts like a straw, sucking the plume ever closer.

Second, the chemical properties of EDB make it as elusive as it is dangerous. Its solubility means that it dissolves easily in water and thus separates from aviation gas and quickly contaminates aqueous systems like underground aquifers. Its chemical stability means that it doesn’t easily biodegrade. Figuring out how much aviation gas KAFB spilled and how much EDB is in the aquifer is therefore important information. But the Air Force doesn’t really seem to care. When asked at a community meeting how much jet fuel spilled, Lanning dismissed the question. “When my kid spills Kool-Aid on the carpet, I’m less concerned about how much he spilled than I am about how to get it cleaned up.” Lanning’s glib dismissal of the size of the plume might reflect less a folksy charm and more a calculated public relations stance. If KAFB can take the focus off the spill's size, it can be represented as a simple remediation project rather than an environmental disaster. And so the Air Force distributes maps of the plume at public meetings—maps that confidently depict EDB far from municipal well fields. But decades after the spill, the Air Force has yet to model the hydraulic properties of the aquifer. And so these maps—overconfidently representing a reality we can't know—are more reassuring fiction than sound hydrological science. If in the decades EDB lurked in the aquifer, it migrated into existing drinking water wells, we wouldn’t know. There is no medical test to determine human exposure and none of the drinking water wells have the technical capacity to meaningfully measure levels of EDB.

None of this seems to concern NMED. The same staffer who called the possible 100,000 gallon spill in 2000 “one of the biggest spills” ever now calls the 24 million gallon spill just another plume. “There are plumes in Roswell, Las Cruces, all over the state. It takes years to clean these things up, but we have clean, closed sites [in New Mexico].” NMED Environmental Health Division Director Tom Blaine echoed McQuillan’s certainty, assuring attendees of a public meeting that KAFB will absolutely “remediate the site. This isn’t our first rodeo.” But there’s little strategy or past action to justify this confidence. There is no plan in place to remove EDB from the aquifer. And in the 60 years since it first spilled jet fuel into Albuquerque’s aquifer, KAFB has yet to remove and treat a single gallon of contaminated groundwater. Meanwhile, as Dave McCoy, executive director of the environmental watchdog group Citizen Action New Mexico told me, the plume keeps moving and “it’s headed directly for you.”

As taken from the 'Alibi' 

What to say?

What am I suppose to say… I write, I tell you… And it continues to crumble around you. It’s ‘Revenge of the Innocence…’ Mark my words…

This has nothing to do with politics… This has to do with right and wrong… My mother always said, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions,” and damn if she ain’t right… I am so tied of good intentions and do gooders,  I could urp!

It’s even in the Churches, political correctness has crippled the truth, you get a fiery good sermon, but mediocrity is the rule, ascetics and political correctness the practice.

To think the universe just is… Is like thinking you’re never going to die. It just ain’t so. Your reasoning is, “because time is in the universe, it itself is somehow timeless…” But the math points to a beginning and an end.” It’s everywhere… There is a chemical breakdown going on throughout the universe, one that can not be reversed or regenerated, as a result, the universe is like a candle, and will one day burn itself out. Poof! With no way of recovering the wax… It all went up in flames. And there will be eternal darkness and cold. No way around it. That’s what the math says. Now they theorize, pontificate and on and on about what they think…  and they stick in numbers and give you theories, for they are educated, and they know the numbers, the real ones, and the ones they made up…. or …’do they?’ The way things are made, “if it’s true here, than it’s true there.’ That is to say, if ‘2+2=4 than 4-2=2… ‘If it’s true there, than it’s true here.’ In other words, ‘a cold dark universe lies ahead.’

Now if we stick the biblical story into it. Adam sinned, and brought death into the world… And that’s what it meant, ‘into the world.’ Not only was Adam going to die, but the whole of it…(the universe) was going to die. Believe it or not, that’s what’s going on… That’s what we’re seeing. That’s what the math says.

Consider a fire in the backyard. You’ve got downed tree limbs, cutting from bushes, a pile of died out zinnias from the summer flower bed, and you have a nice little fire, and feed the flames one stick at a time. Soon, all that big pile is ‘gone!’ Where did it go? Up in flames… You have reduced that big pile to a tiny heap of ashes, and in time, that heap of ashes will be ambient temperature.

What do you think the sun is doing..? If it’s true here, than it’s true there.    ‘From ashes thou art…to ashes thou shall return…’

But what about the life cycle? What about it? We have now broken the DNA code, and what have we learned? There is no evolution, there is instead deterioration, the code is slowly but surely breaking down. Poof!  

Myths… funny thing about myths… There’re suppose to be made up? That is to say… not true… But there is a saying, ‘truth will stand the test of time.’ Greek Mythology…? “It’s mythology.” Then they find the city of Troy, and the story appears to be true. They find the site of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then Jericho; they have found the site of the Red Sea crossing, complete with chariots, ect…   So what’s true and what’s not? What about Atlantis? There’s a myth… comes out of the Greek mythology, Homer, Plato…

Then we have the myths of the dragons… Everybody’s got a dragon story, damn dragons are everywhere… Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, St George, who slay the dragon..?  Myth?

‘There is nothing stranger than truth.’ How many times have you heard this? That’s because it’s true… No single man can know or imagine the truth, so when a small bit of truth is revealed, it’s stranger than anything we thought.

Therefore the truly great stories are based on truth, because there is nothing more compelling than the truth… “Truth will stand the test of time.”

The flood of Noah’s day… Every ancient culture around the world starts at the end of a great flood, of which only they survived. Myth? Really? Every major culture? I believe the Chinese calendar may have begun at the end of the flood. If you take an honest look at the geological record, it screams global flood, a flood right around the beginning of the Chinese calendar.

Prier to the flood, the world was a whole different place… How different? I don’t know… But I do know, eight people spanned that flood in a boat… Those eight people saw it all… Those eight people were full blown adults when the flood occurred… Noah was the last strand of the true God handed down by Adam… Satan controlled man now, and corruption was consuming them…

Now let us consider; those eight people told their stories of the world prier to the flood, where they had spent their childhood and much of their lives. This I offer is ‘The Golden Age,’ and it was consumed by the sea… and so it was, right before their eyes, just like the stories say… and no one survived, save those few souls who told the story. The Golden Age is what God destroyed… A utopia, under Satan’s rule.

There is an old B movie called ‘Logan’s Run.’ Not really well done, terrible scrip, but it had a pretty girl in it and so I sat through it. That movie, through all these years has stuck with me.

Basically, it’s the story of a group of people who live inside a huge machine which provides for them. Makes them, grows them up… and then kills them. The cycle of life as seen by a computer… During the time you’re young adults, you can be and do anything you want, (except be a child or be old) when your time is up, your time is up. You’re dead. If you didn’t jump to your death like you’re suppose to, then ‘Logan’ hunts you down like a dawg and kills you on behalf of the computer. They made the world (as it was) look all hunky-dory, but void of any meaning, absent any purpose.. Well along comes ‘Logan’s’ turn to die… So he runs… and the hunter is being hunted… Well to make a long story short, he cracks the whole machine open and wa-la everyone is free with the discovery of a whole big world outside, how wonderful. (?) or so I thought… In the years since, I have watched you build just such a machine… Return to the Golden Age… Free of responsibility and free to be a jerk… Among the elite anyway.

Want to know what happened to the Golden Age? It’s the gas you put in your car, the oil you put in your engine, the plastics you wrap your food with… the coal you heat your home with and use to generate your lights… The diesel which plows our fields and brings our goods to market… This the world that was…

Satan wants you to long for the Golden Age; but he doesn’t want you burning the oil and coal, least you figure out where it came from… The more you study it, the more will be revealed… “The truth is stranger than fiction.” And all the while, the rebuilding of The Golden Age continues… at a fervor pace.

Satan has you by the balls people… as the new Golden Age rises. I not only speak to America, but to Russia, U.K. Ukraine, Japan, China and to anyone who read these words, Christ is your only hope. He was in the beginning, and he is now, and so it was, and so it shall be. 

George Henry Nichols

Declaration of Independence

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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

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