The map that is missing here is the map that Sandia Labs has showing the placement of 8 groundwater supply wells at Mesa del Sol.  What I didn't bring up in my last posting was the fact that a thermonuclear bomb was accidently dropped at Mesa del Sol, 0.3 from the Sandia Labs boundary.  Although plutonium was not set off, there was a substantial conventional high explosives detontation that spread depleted uranium about a 2 mile diameter inside MdS.  Depleted uranium still remains (despite Kirtland Air Force Base cleanup efforts) as a pathway for contamination to ingestion by children and others who will live at MdS. 

Both Kirtland and Sandia have other serious groundwater contamination issues from hundreds of toxic and radioactive dumpsites along with a spill of 5,000,000 gallons of jet fuel currently on the aquifer and that has escaped off site from Kirtland. 

The MdS community is at further risk from air contamination by a proposed permit that would grant Kirtland AFB the planned open burning/open detonation of 100,000 pounds of toxic waste and high explosives each year for the next ten years.  MdS should be requesting the air force to halt this inappropriate practice adjoining a highly urbanized area.  Local politicians should be up in arms against approval of such a permit and a public hearing should be held on the matter.  For further information, contact the group Protect Air and Water (affiliated with Citizen Action and Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping). 

Yikes! As a former resident of KAFB who loved the area so very much and who left there in 1969, I was looking forwarded to returning and retiring there in a few years. These revelations do complicate the decision. I will stay tuned to see how the land field issue is worked out. I knew about the Sandia Laboratories Mixed Waste Landfield on the base, but I thought it was considerably further away. I did not know about the city and county landfields at all. Mesa del Sol seems like a great development. I hope that this really becomes a non-issue.

If the material in the mixed waste landfill is not mobile over the long term, exposure to hazardous or radioactive material may not be a huge issue. That is something worth exploring. And they recently re-engineered the cover on that thing. I think there are a few more immediate issues:
1) It's not easy to build a stable foundation on a regular municipal landfill, because the material underneath is trash, not compacted soil and rock.
2) There are emissions like methane from the decay of ordinary household waste within a landfill. I had a friend who lived in a trailer park on or near the landfill south of the city many years ago; and there were methane fires there all of the time. Maybe they vent it better now. I wouldn't know.