
Barbaraellen Koch
This service station closed due to gasoline shortage in Santa Fe in 1979. Gas stations built before the 1980s are a primary source of groundwater contamination.
All of Earth contains repositories of stories, a record of time layered on itself. History emerges in the different colored stripes of rock—sandstone, pumice, shale—in the hills along the highway. The past manifests during spring planting in the backyard when a fossil or an old tin shows up again. When the objects found are of human origin, we call it archaeology.
Future archaeologists might sample soil and the water at places like the empty plot off of Baca Street that was once the Santa Fe Generating Station to determine a record of the area's 20th century industry.
When the remains are toxic pollutants, we call it contamination.
At least 60 feet below the surface of the property, a petroleum plume floats above the water table. It's one of five known chemical plumes that contaminate groundwater within the city limits, caused by landfills, leaky gas tanks and dry-cleaning chemical spills before state groundwater regulations were established in the 1980s.
Now, city officials would like to see all the messes gone.
Yet, even when successfully "remediated," plumes can still leave chemical clues to what kinds of human activity took place here, traces that will last for generations.
Some of these sites, such as a plume caused by an old gas station that is now the location of the Santa Fe County courthouse downtown, have been remediated to "acceptable standards" set by the state and federal government. Others, such as the one on Baca Street, are still "under investigation."
Even where remediation efforts have been successful, the full extent of groundwater contamination remains unknown, says Bill Schneider, water resources coordinator for the city water division. He adds that the documented plumes could only be the tip of a contaminated iceberg—there are at least 40 other potential release sites around the city.
Schneider says while groundwater pollution doesn't currently pose a -significant threat to public health, it might down the line.
"One of the things we're trying to do is get out ahead of the problem and take a more proactive approach," Schneider tells SFR. He says the division is developing what managers are calling the "wellhead protection program," a project that would attempt to map all potential contamination sites and facilitate testing in as many cases as possible. The other three plumes already on their radar are from a former dry cleaner in a strip mall at the corner of Cerrillos and St. Mike's; the former Ortiz Landfill; and the Old Trail Garage on Old Santa Fe Trail.
Right now, city taps rely heavily on surface water drawn from rivers and reservoirs. Schneider says the city groundwater wells are mostly used as back-up during dry spells and are carefully tested and treated for contaminants.
Schneider worries the increasing likelihood of severe droughts, wildfires and population growth could force the city to rely more heavily on its groundwater, and untreated contamination could -jeopardize municipal water security in the future. Private well owners, responsible for their own testing, may currently be at risk.
Yet identifying the full scope of -contamination in the city is a significant challenge. That responsibility lies with the New Mexico Environment Department and the party responsible for the contamination.
Complex geological conditions make locating and treating chemical plumes notoriously difficult. The task can cost millions, even under the best of -circumstances when city, state and responsible parties work together.
John Hale knows the conundrum all too well. As the environmental manager at Public Service Company of New Mexico, he oversees remediation at the former Santa Fe Generating Station.
The plume is attributed to a leak in the 1950s that dumped 18,000 gallons of fuel into the ground, Hale tells SFR. Alex Puglisi, an environmental compliance specialist for the city, says that number was closer to 30,000-80,000 gallons, "-depending on who you ask."
PNM excavated many tons of -fuel-soaked earth for disposal shortly -after, but remaining contamination went undetected until the 1980s and '90s when benzene and gasoline compounds began appearing in the city well adjacent to the property.
Hale estimates PNM has spent approximately $10 million investigating the site since the '90s, yet the exact dimensions of the plume, its boundaries and direction of movement beneath the earth's surface could never be accurately -determined and sources of secondary contamination were never located.
In 2015, the public utility entered a program with the Petroleum Storage Tank Bureau of the NMED that transfers the responsibility to pay for and oversee investigations and remediation efforts to the state, but PNM will always be responsible for monitoring the site.
"That site was like Swiss cheese—we drilled a lot of wells, we did a lot of testing and we never found the 'smoking gun' or the source that was attributable to what we're seeing in the groundwater," Hale says of the search for sources of secondary contamination that continually show up in investigations and thwarted past remediation efforts. Hale hopes that by entering the Tank Bureau's Corrective Action Fund, the utility will have enough support to "hopefully get to a conclusion within our lifetimes."

Hale worries there is no easy remedy. That's partly because the ground at the site holds records of many different contaminants, each with a separate time peg and likely origin—leaded gasoline that was phased out in the '70s and unleaded gasoline likely from a later release; fresh diesel gas and much older "weathered" diesel gas; chlorinated solvents that were used both at a service center on the property and at the New Mexico Department of Transportation across Cerrillos Road.
PSTB Chief Donna Bahar says a recent state investigation on the site was completed last year and a report of findings is due this month. The next step is to collect remediation proposals.
The Baca Street site is No. 1 on the department's cleanup list for the Santa Fe area. The second target site is in Arroyo Hondo, Santa Fe County outside the city.