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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The New Mexico Environment Department issued a “notice of violation” Thursday to Kirtland Air Force Base, saying base officials missed a Dec. 31 deadline to design and implement an interim plan to begin cleaning up contamination from a decades-old jet fuel spill.

The notice says the Air Force faces a civil penalty of up to $10,000 and an additional $5,000 for each day the violation continues – though those penalties could be mitigated if the Air Force acts by June 30.

“Deadlines matter,” NMED Secretary Ryan Flynn said in a statement. “We believe the Air Force has made progress over the past year” to address the contamination.

“However, results are what ultimately matter the most, and so far the Air Force has failed to implement an interim measure for removing EDB (ethylene dibromide, a contaminant in the jet fuel) from the groundwater. Our expectations … will not be satisfied until the Air Force begins operating the groundwater pump-and-treat system.”

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Ethylene dibromide is highly soluble, toxic and carcinogenic.

The Air Force Civil Engineer Center, which is overseeing the remediation project for the Air Force, did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment on the NMED notification.

The fuel leak, first detected in 1999, came from pipelines beneath the base’s former bulk fuels depot. The leak is estimated to have seeped between 6 million and 24 million gallons of fuel.

Since the leak’s discovery, the Air Force, NMED, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority and environmental groups have sought out ways to stop the spread of the “fuel plume” moving toward the city’s wells.

Scientists working for the agencies dealing with the problem have estimated it could take anywhere from five to 40 years for the EDB to reach the nearest drinking water well.

Although the Air Force has installed monitoring wells and various systems to extract the pollutants, other stakeholders have pushed for faster and more effective remediation efforts.

The goal of the interim remediation plan – called the EDB Interim Measure – is to stabilize and collapse the fuel plume while final corrective action measures are selected, according to NMED.

Although NMED extended deadlines for the plan’s submission last summer, those extensions did not remove the expectation for an EDB Interim Measure to be in place by Dec. 31, according to NMED officials.

Thursday’s notice of violation requires the Air Force to submit an EDB Interim Measure Implementation Plan for approval that outlines the more expansive cleanup efforts.