Nickel contamination from a Cold War-era waste dump, known as the Mixed Waste Landfill (MWL), has been cumulatively building to toxic levels in the groundwater below the MWL. The contamination has been repeatedly measured at higher and higher levels in one of the MWL monitoring wells since 1990. The dump contains an estimated 100,000 cubic ft. of radioactive and hazardous waste from 30 years of nuclear weapons research buried in unlined pits and trenches at Sandia.

A study by Registered Geologist Robert Gilkeson reveals that the nickel wastes buried in the unlined pits and trenches at the landfill are responsible for the nickel contamination measured in groundwater below the MWL. Mr Gilkeson stated, “The position by Sandia and the New Mexico Environment Department that the nickel contamination is caused by corrosion of the stainless steel well screen is technically incorrect and without basis to the water quality data.”

Dave McCoy, Director of Citizen Action stated that “The New Mexico Environment Department should enforce state and federal laws. The NMED should require fines against Sandia for their failure to report this type of contamination within a seven day period. Sandia has gotten away with an inadequate well monitoring network, ignoring data and producing shoddy well data reporting for far too long.”

The levels of the nickel contamination measured in water samples collected from the monitoring well have increased ten-fold since the first samples were collected.

The nickel contamination in the first water sample collected from this well in 1990 were at a level of 43 ug/L (parts per billion) and have increased to a level of 405 ug/L for a water sample collected in 2005. The New Mexico Water Quality Standard is that nickel shall not exceed a level of 200 ug/L in the waters of the State.

The reason that the nickel cannot be from the corrosion of the stainless steel well screen of the monitoring well is that corrosion of the well screen will provide both chromium and nickel to the groundwater in a mathematical proportion. However, the high levels of nickel and very low levels of chromium are evidence that the nickel contamination is not from corrosion of the well screen. In addition, the nickel is dissolved and is part of a larger plume that can easily travel in the drinking water resource.

Last November, the NMED published a report to assure New Mexicans that the monitoring wells at the MWL have provided valid water quality data and no contamination from the waste dump has reached Albuquerque’s valuable groundwater resource. The NMED study did not identify that the waste dump is responsible for the nickel contamination. Mr. Gilkeson has reviewed the NMED Report and finds the report to have no scientific value and recommends that the report be retracted from publication.

Mr Gilkeson also points out that “The nickel contamination in the groundwater proves that the very expensive fate and transport model fabricated by Sandia scientists to show that such contamination would never travel from the MWL to groundwater is a boondoggle product grounded in assumptions. The fate and transport model is a ruse that also must be retracted from publication instead of a new phase of revision concocted from another set of assumptions. The false promise of expensive groundwater models to protect groundwater is also a common practice of the scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

Other studies conducted by Sandia, also show that thirteen cancer-causing semi-volatile organic compounds have reached as far as a monitoring well 500 feet outside the boundary of the MWL. The monitoring well detected the presence of the carcinogens in the groundwater that supplies Albuquerque’s drinking water.

Again, Sandia claims that the contaminants are from the well screen.

Sandia records confirm that these carcinogenic solvents, are consistently showing up in other monitoring wells for Sandia and KAFB such as in the Tijeras Arroyo, numerous wells at the Technical Area 5 and the Chemical Waste Landfill.

Mr. Gilkeson also warns that “the sampling methods used by Sandia can strip out 70 percent of the volatile carcinogenic solvents in the water so that the contamination across Sandia and Kirtland Air Force Base (KAFB) may be much greater than the samples reveal.”