Contaminated air: SE ABQ neighborhood threated with toxic vapor plume

Sep. 12—For years, more than 200 residents and workers in an enclave of Southeast Albuquerque potentially have been breathing contaminated air.

Some of them have protections. Some don't. Some didn't even know about the danger.

Now, New Mexico wants the federal government to make the site a national priority for cleanup, acknowledge the significant threat it poses to the environment and public health and make federal dollars available for cleanup and mitigation.

The site, a corner building along Simms Avenue and Carlisle Boulevard, was home to two dry cleaner facilities from 1953 to 2017. The facilities left behind a chlorinated solvent soil gas plume, which consists of the industrial solvents tetrachloroethylene, also known as perchloroethylene, or PCE, and trichloroethylene, or TCE.

In 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started sampling air and subsurface soil gas at nearby residential and commercial properties. The EPA found contamination that could be affecting up to 257 people in nearby residences, businesses and churches.

It's not clear exactly how long the contamination has been present.

The threat

Superfund is a site contamination cleanup program run by the EPA, set in place by the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. Over time, the contaminated sites on the EPA's National Priority List have come to be colloquially known as Superfund sites, or just Superfunds.

Last week, the New Mexico Environment Department asked the EPA to add Carlisle Village Cleaners, the strip mall where the dry cleaning facilities operated, to its National Priority List. NMED is seeking the increased help because of how many people could be exposed to the contamination, Ground Water Quality Bureau Chief Justin Ball said.

He said the toxic vapor plume has a radius of about 600 feet.

There are 21 single-family homes, 80 multi-family homes, 16 commercial buildings and two churches in the vicinity that have been affected or are potentially affected, according to the EPA.

The agency found that at least seven properties exceeded safe contamination levels.

Christopher Alliman lives just around the corner, in the closest single-family house to the site of the former dry cleaners. He and his family moved in about seven or eight years ago, right before the dry cleaning facility closed for good.

His daughter was about 6 years old when they moved in, and his son was 10. They're now 14 and 17.

"Looking at the chemicals long term, there's concerns for lung cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, so cancer has become an issue. So initially, now we're thinking about our younger kids and how long they had been there," he said.

To make matters worse, the house Alliman and his family live in was built in the 1950s and is wrapped in straw bales.

"So severely and wonderfully insulated," he said. "So it doesn't have a lot of air turnover, which is usually a good thing."

The EPA tested the contamination levels in Alliman's house around 2023. The levels were more than five times higher than what the federal agency deemed safe and acceptable.

A few months later, the agency provided a temporary air purifying unit for the household.

The EPA hasn't come back to test the air or change the filter of the air unit since. Alliman said the filter is good for a while, and past symptoms his family had been experiencing, like headaches, have gotten better since they've had the unit.

He and his family aren't too worried.

"This is just one chemical of thousands that we're exposed to all the time, and we just happen to know about this one," Alliman said. "There are so many chemicals out there that we don't know we're being exposed to."

He said the EPA has been very communicative about the issue.

"They've been really good to us," he said.

Other neighbors shared the sentiment — like Cheryl Fox, who owns a small shopping district across the street called the Source.

The EPA found that one of her buildings, a former Michael Thomas coffee shop, exceeded safe contamination levels, so the agency also gave her an air purifying unit earlier this year.

The EPA's Residential Indoor Air Regional Management level for residential properties is a maximum of 130 micrograms per cubic meter and for commercial properties is 530 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the EPA, so buildings that equaled or exceeded those levels for the air purifying units.

Fox also said she isn't too worried. Fox said the actual strip mall where the dry cleaning facilities were, the church and the families living nearby are the ones more at risk.

"This is a business, so people aren't here around the clock. They're not sleeping there," she said. "So I feel like, phew, I lucked out by turning everything from rental properties into businesses."

The four properties she owns were used as residences when she bought them in the early 2000s, when the dry cleaner facility was still running.

"It was a scary thing, but mostly it's something that brought our community together and it's ending up being kind of an empowering thing," she said.

Not everyone feels the same.

Paul and Amy Gleason live in a duplex just across the street from Alliman's house, closer in distance to where the dry cleaners were. They said officials came by a few months ago to test the contamination levels in their home.

"It's scary. I have asthma, and it's gotten worse," Amy said.

The couple removed all their cleaning supplies, paint and anything else that could interfere with the test. The officials — the couple couldn't remember if it was NMED or EPA — left a small testing device on a table inside for two days.

Later, the officials returned to tell them that the air quality was bad, but maybe it was because they left something in the home, like cleaning supplies.

"We never got anything that was supposed to help us. We got the test," Paul said.

When the Journal asked the EPA about why the duplex didn't receive an air purifying unit, EPA Press Secretary Remmington Belford said the home didn't exceed the federal Residential Indoor Air Regional Management Level for PCE.

Belford said the EPA has identified two residences and five commercial properties that exceed federally set safe PCE levels, and those seven properties all have air purifying units.

The Gleasons didn't have many updates about what was going on with the air contamination situation. The EPA has held two town halls in the area about it, but Paul and Amy hadn't been able to make either and said the events seemed pretty casual and optional, so they didn't think it was that urgent to attend.

Other tenants in the area —including Matthew Villegas, who previously rented Boundless Therapeutics at the Source; and Tatiana Poling who has a private practice she rents on Carlisle and Anderson avenues — didn't know about the contamination left behind by the dry cleaning facilities until the Journal called about it.

In contrast, the owners of the actual site where the dry cleaners operated hear from the EPA every couple of months.

Helping Properties is the real estate investment firm that operates out of the facility now. Manager José Tinoco said the firm has been there since February 2022, and the EPA contacted the firm in the fall of 2022, giving the business two temporary air purifying units.

He said the federal agency comes every two or three months to change the filters out. The EPA has done a good job educating the workers in the building about what's going on, he added.

"No concerns about it, really," Tinoco said.

Making the site a Superfund

The state Environment Department identified the former dry cleaners' site in 2021, according to a 2023 contaminated sites update from NMED, and started considering its potential for the EPA's National Priorities List. The state agency sampled residential properties in the area and found both PCE and TCE concentrations in the air.

Ball said NMED referred the site to the EPA in July 2022 and has been working collaboratively with the agency on removal and remediation work since then.

On Sept. 5, the federal Superfund program proposed four new sites to the EPA's National Priorities List, including Carlisle Village Cleaners.

The last time the EPA added a New Mexico Superfund location to its National Priorities List was in 2016.

If the EPA adds the site to its NPL, Belford, the EPA press secretary, said the agency could conduct "further remediation efforts."

There's a two-month-long public comment period before the EPA adds Superfund sites to its National Priority List. The deadline for public comments for the New Mexico-proposed site is Nov. 4, which can be made here.

After public comment, if the site still qualifies for cleanup under the EPA's Superfund program, the federal agency will add the site to the NPL through a final rulemaking.

How long this takes varies. Belford said his agency generally undergoes rulemakings twice in one year: once in the late summer or early fall and once in the late winter or early spring.

Alliman said having the area classified as a Superfund site would be a double-edged sword.

On one hand, he said, the value of his property could dip — "one of the large investments that we make through our lives."

"So for my mind, I go to Long Island, the nuclear meltdown, Superfund and all of that," he said.

On the other hand, once the cleanup measures are completed, the property value could increase, Alliman said, because the building has a federal bill of health most properties don't have.

Fox had similar hope, particularly because she's looking to rent out a couple of her properties to businesses.

Some of New Mexico's Superfund sites have been sitting on the National Priorities List for decades. The three oldest sites on the list date back to 1983.

New Mexico has 15 Superfund sites. There are 1,340 Superfund sites in the U.S.

The EPA, to date, has removed five sites from New Mexico's list of Superfunds, meaning the sites should no longer pose a significant threat to the environment or public health.

Whether Carlisle Village Cleaners makes the Superfund list or not, the EPA is planning additional mitigation efforts. Belford said in late 2024 or early 2025, his agency will install vapor intrusion mitigation systems in residences and vapor extraction systems in commercial properties.

The EPA and NMED are hosting a town hall meeting at the Life Tabernacle United Pentecostal Church, 1112 Carlisle SE, on Oct. 1 about the contamination. The meeting will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.