Navy officials are reporting the discovery of a previously undetected fuel plume “finger” extending to the southeast of the estimated 1.5 million-gallon plume floating on the water beneath the Defense Fuel Support Point (DFSP) at Naval Base Point Loma.
The finger sits about 40 feet beneath the surface of the DFSP, which is located on the base at the end of Rosecrans Street.
Capt. Mark Patton, commanding officer of Naval Base Point Loma, shared the findings with the Community Liaison Group on July 18 as he updated group members on the status of the recovery efforts.
“We have reason to believe this was merely a finger of the plume that we have never detected before,” he said.
Patton said the fuel discovered by a newly installed monitoring well in May is “old fuel” and does not indicate the presence of a new leak.
He added that the plume remains essentially the same shape with the exception of the newly discovered area. No new leakages have been detected since May and there is no indication the plume has reached San Diego Bay, he said.
A fuel plume finger extends underneath only one residence immediately to the north of the base and poses no significant health risk to the residents, he said.
The update comes about a month ahead of construction of the replacement recovery system slated to be built between mid-August and early November, with a new tank system slated for next year. The system will replace about 70 monitoring and recovery wells, which have recovered about 147,000 gallons of product to date, Patton said.
The $5 million recovery system consists of a two-foot-wide trench extending down past the water table. As the water and fuel flow into the trench, pumps will extract the mixture for cleaning. Once installed, the system should be operational for about 20 years.
Although the majority of the fuel should be extracted within five to 10 years, the system will remain in place to clean any remnants of the plume, as well as to act as a “barrier” in case of a future leak, Patton said.
He added that the Navy, in cooperation with a private contracting group Shaw Inc. and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board will continue to monitor the fuel plume by installing the 10-inch-diameter recovery and monitoring wells throughout the cleanup efforts.
“The more wells “¦ the better we can define the plume boundaries,” Patton said. “We are continuously committed to finding where it starts and stops.”
The recovery wells will stay in place for as long as it takes to recover all the fuel, he said.
As the Navy and private contractors continue the recovery, plans to replace the existing fuel storage tanks ” with a $140 million state-of-the-art storage tank system ” are already under way.
The Milcon P-401 Tank Replacement Project will have several advantages over the current tank system, which was built in the 1930s, Patton said.
The new system consists of eight state-of-the-art tanks to replace about 40 above- and below-ground tanks currently spread across 200 acres, Patton said. The new tanks will cover about 35 acres. Although the plan originally incorporated construction of 10 tanks, the number was reduced to eight larger tanks because of the rising cost of concrete and steel, Patton said.
The new tanks will be 149 feet in diameter and painted white to minimize heating from the sun, he said.
Patton said he could not give specific details on the design of the project because the project has not yet gone through the bid process.
Construction of the P-401 system is scheduled to start in the summer of 2008 with heavy construction expected to last two or three years, he said.
However, news of heavy construction and more trucks in and out of the base drew groans from the Community Liaison Group.
Patton said trucks currently traveling to and from the base would be diverted to Catalina Boulevard in an effort to mitigate traffic congestion. The trucks will also queue at another part of the base near Harbor Drive to avoid congestion around the entrance of the base.
Resident and former Peninsula Community Planning Board member Edwina Goddard said the increased traffic would upset residents on Rosecrans Street. She said the vibrations from large trucks shake her home and those of her neighbors, which lie to the east of Rosecrans Street.
“They still jiggle. They’ve jiggled since 1962,” Goddard said.
While residents like Goddard are concerned about traffic and construction impediments to their quality of life, other residents are keeping an eye on possible health and environmental concerns resulting from the fuel spill.
John Adriany, a long-time Point Loma resident and environmental chemist said that although the plume hasn’t reached the bay, he is concerned about the fumes from the plume posing a possible health risk.
Adriany said the fuel mixture under the base doesn’t evaporate as fast as regular gasoline. Although he said the fuel is not as volatile as regular gasoline, breathing its fumes may be dangerous.
He added, however, that the draft site assessment report has yet to be approved and released.
“We don’t have the information to make a good assessment, [but the Navy claims] its not a risk,” he said.
The plume consists of two types of fuel: marine diesel fuel and Jet Propulsion 5, Patton said. He said the fuels are used because of their relative stability. The Defense Fuel Supply Point is a main supplier of fuel for the Navy so stability and safety is important, he said.
According to a community environmental newsletter distributed to members of the Community Liaison Group at a previous meeting, a human health-risk assessment calculates risk to residents and site workers.
According to the newsletter, the excess lifetime cancer risk for residents near the site is two-in-100 million. This is below a recognized cancer risk range of between one-in-one million and one-in-10,000, according to the newsletter.
Draft forms of the site assessment report and the corrective action plan are available for viewing through the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The board is the lead regulatory agency for the remediation project. It provides the Navy with guidelines and federal water quality standards.
As the Navy and contractors continue the cleanup, the water quality control board analyzes the data to see if the plan needs revision, according to Laurie Walsh, water resource control engineer for the project.
The DFSP is the Navy’s primary fuel storage and dispensing facility on the West Coast, according to the Community Environmental Newsletter.
For more information, contact the Naval Base Point Loma Environmental Office at (619) 553-7177.