Feedback: 7 News Investigates: “Gone” Part I

7 News Reporter Jeff Cole first went to Fort Drum’s Wheeler-Sack Army Air Field in March, where wells were collecting spilled jet fuel that was flowing in the ground.

Army officials stood their ground, saying that 160,000 gallons of fuel leaked out.

However, we challenged that number by providing Fort Drum with its own fuel inventory records, which tell a very different story.

According to the records, between April 2003 and November 2006, Fort Drum had a leak - at one point going 40 straight months recording a loss.

In 2003, the most fuel lost was almost 17,000 gallons. That happened in December.

The following month, 12,000 gallons leaked.

Another 15,500 gallons seeped into the ground in October 2005.

In February 2006, an additional 18,500 gallons spilled.

After more than three years, almost 345,000 gallons of jet fuel had seeped into the ground, according to the military’s own records.

Fort Drum officials now agree that the new figure is correct.

They admit earlier estimations were calculated incorrectly by an engineering firm it hired.

“It is embarrassing,” said Mike McKinnon, Director of Logistics at Fort Drum.

He’s the man responsible for the people collecting the data we discovered.

“There are a lot of people that have responsibility in this. There certainly were organizational failures in many different areas, but to say that one individual has responsibility for this is not really possible for me to say,” he said.

McKinnon blames the government for not providing enough training for workers at Wheeler-Sack who were using new technology at the airfield to monitor fuel usage.

He argues that with better training for workers, the leak could have been discovered sooner.

McKinnon says while Fort Drum was recording three year’s worth of fuel losses, his workers didn’t think one of the Army’s most modern airfields could have sprung a leak.

Instead they concentrated on other possibilities, including missing fuel receipts, human error in measurements and not adjusting numbers for cold temperatures.

“They discussed the possibility of leaks. It seems like everyone was looking in the wrong direction. But I don’t want to leave the impression that the people here just nonchalantly recorded and reported and drove on,” said McKinnon.

The failure to recognize the leak goes higher up the chain of command.

The Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, oversees military fuel use.

Colonel James Meyer is the director of operations. He puts the blame on policies, not people.

“Through the spill here at Fort Drum, clearly identified not only Fort Drum level, but our level at corporate level DESC, that our systems, our processes, our policies, weren’t precise enough to be able to raise that red flag that seems should have been raised,” said Meyer.

A simple policy designed to expose problems - not an environmental mess.

“That represents a large quantity of fuel, represents a large amount of taxpayer dollars and that is of great concern to us because of our duty and our desire to make sure that we are trustworthy stewards of the government’s resources,” said Meyer.

A criminal investigation by the federal and state governments has been completed and officials say no one will face charges.

On Wednesday, 7 News will take a look at how Fort Drum’s policies were supposed to work, how they failed and how the massive fuel leak has sparked worldwide change.

Visit this story’s homepage for a full archive and list of resources.

See Jeff Cole’s report:

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