The Water Information Program

Just south of Albuquerque on Kirtland Air Force Base lie 30 years’ worth of canisters, boxes and even plastic bags, summarily dumped into unlined trenches by Sandia National Laboratories during nuclear weapons research. This mixed waste landfill, loaded with 100,000 cubic feet of "low-level" radioactive and hazardous waste, was once out in the middle of nowhere, but now the city of Albuquerque is growing rapidly in its direction. A new 90,000-resident development, Mesa del Sol, is going in west of the Air Force base. Even as the city creeps toward the dump, some of the toxic substances in the dump may be creeping toward the Albuquerque Aquifer, currently the city’s sole source of drinking water. Sandia and the state regulatory agency have struggled to figure out a safe and legal way to keep that from happening.

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