Dec. 23 – The New Mexico Environment Department is asking for additional oversight of a city dog park in the Casa Solana neighborhood located on a former landfill, but officials say the request is not a cause for concern.
There is no evidence that the popular Frank Ortiz Dog Park is unsafe for animals and their walkers, or for other users, said John Dupuis, director of public works and utilities for the city of Santa Fe.
Monitoring is routine for landfills dating back to the Frank Ortiz site, which closed before the state instituted landfill closure regulations.
The city council approved an amendment to the contract with Intera Inc. in November. good to increase compensation by $229,132.72 for continued monitoring of groundwater and soil vapor at the dog park.
The park is located on part of the closed landfill. The remainder is an unused portion of the Buckman Road Recycling & Transfer Station and is not open to the public.
Department of Environment spokesman Jorge Estrada wrote in a November email that the agency asked the city to install one or more additional groundwater monitoring wells at the site “to verify that any groundwater or subsurface vapor impacts that could affect the former landfill can cause, does not extend beyond the site.”
The city also plans to complete a multi-year surface emissions monitoring program for landfill gas, which started in 2022, he wrote.
“The city has implemented the landfill gas monitoring program to formally demonstrate that the landfill is not emitting harmful amounts of methane to the surface,” Estrada wrote. “The data collected to date under this program confirms this conclusion.”
Even after a site is confirmed to be clean, the Environment Department requires continued monitoring for a period of time to ensure conditions remain stable.
The department expects monitoring at the Frank Ortiz Dog Park to continue for at least several years, Estrada wrote.
Dupuis said one of the overarching concerns — and why monitoring is necessary — is that nitrogen from the former landfill could leach into the groundwater that supplies the city’s spring fields. However, he doesn’t think this is likely, he says.
“There’s quite a distance between the dog park and the river, and we don’t have any water wells in between,” he said.
Another well is further away, Dupuis said, but the depth of groundwater from which the well draws is not where some elements of the old landfill migrate.
“There is a general movement toward that area, but it’s not overly damaging, and we just have to continue to monitor it to make sure that what we assume is happening won’t be a problem,” he said. “And if we ever notice anything different, we will take action to prevent it from becoming a problem.”
Dupuis said it is not clear whether the nitrogen comes solely from the landfill or from another source. Dupuis, a resident of the Casa Solana neighborhood, said he speculates whether some of it could have come from the former Japanese internment camp at a site near the park.
“That’s the only thing I could fathom because it’s the only thing I know was here before Casa Solana was here,” he said. “I’ve never seen any old maps to know where they had their waste? Where they had their facilities? To me it seems plausible.”
The internment camp was established in 1942 and interned more than 4,500 Japanese-American men during World War II. In 2002, a stone marker was placed at the Frank Ortiz Dog Park commemorating the camp.
Dupuis says he sometimes wonders whether it would be cost-effective to completely remediate the former landfill and develop it into housing.
“I looked at other places that have moved all the bulk that is within their old pre-landfill site so they can reclaim it for other purposes, and looked at how expensive it would be and then what the value of the land is. ” is – there is potential for it to play out,” he said.
As things stand, the site doesn’t do anything for anyone, including the city, Dupuis said: “You just have to keep an eye on it forever.”
A new state requirement calls for the city to monitor groundwater at the site for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, and the solvent 1,4-dioxane.
“To provide more comprehensive coverage of the site, we requested that these analyzes be conducted after the additional groundwater well is installed,” Estrada wrote in an email.
Dupuis said he is not surprised that the Department of the Environment is starting to require more PFAS monitoring, something he said is also required in some water discharge permits. Areas in the state have become hotspots for PFAS contamination, including some private wells in La Cienega and La Cieneguilla, raising questions about how widespread the spread of the “forever chemicals” really is.
The more data the state can get, the better, Dupuis said.
“It wouldn’t surprise me that wherever and whenever they can get someone to give them data on PFAS, they’re probably asking for it just because we want to understand what it is and how big of a problem it is,” he said.
