Base engineers thank church at food pantry

  • Published
  • By Kendahl Johnson
  • Kirtland Public Affairs
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. --  Kirtland engineers have been putting their backs into a local church's food bank in return for the church allowing fuel plume remediation work in its parking lot.

"They've been delightful to work with and just kind and courteous," said Christ United Methodist Church food distribution coordinator Ann Sharpe.

Wayne Bitner, Air Force Civil Engineering Center chief of environmental restoration, said he and his staff approached the church, on Gibson Boulevard near the base, about drilling monitoring and extraction wells on its property for the process of cleaning up the plume of jet fuel that leaked underground several decades ago. They met with church leaders to get permission to drill in the church's west parking lot and try to minimize the inconvenience to the congregation as much as possible.

"We kept putting drilling rigs in their parking lot again and again," said AFCEC environmental engineer Scott Clark.

Drilling the monitoring wells took a week, but work on the well to extract contaminated water took a month and tore up the parking lot, he said.

Sharpe said the church has been distributing food once a month since 2012. The food bank usually operates from the west parking lot, but clients had to go to the east parking lot during drilling early this year.

With less-convenient parking for the distribution, Kirtland engineers and the contract drillers helped unload the food from the Roadrunner Food Bank truck and carry it to clients' cars.

Clark and Bitner volunteered the most time of the Kirtland representatives, but as many as six other people from the base also helped, depending on the month.

Clark said he didn't mind helping.

"We're all in the same community, and we're not happy about the plume going off base," he said.

He added that showing up in person, as opposed to being a "nameless, faceless entity," helps community relations and gives people opportunity to ask questions. Bitner said the church needed the extra assistance.

"The older church population and an older neighborhood population they serve with their food drive, they often can't carry their food to their cars or get it where they need to go, so that's another reason we decided to help," he said.

AFCEC members started working on the food distribution in February or March. They're still helping, much to Sharpe's delight, even though the drilling finished, the extraction well has been operating since June and the parking lot has been repaved.

"They just dug in and helped out," she said.

Sharpe said the food bank gives away about 3,500 pounds of food a month. Fifteen to 20 church members help, along with the Kirtland personnel. Bitner said the project at the church was the first time AFCEC worked on private property instead of in city right-of-ways for the cleanup. Clark said the congregation has been very gracious. "We wouldn't have hit our goal if it hadn't been for that church allowing us to go in and put that well in," he said.