Air, water quality a priority in Tinker's environmental plan Published April 13, 2012 By Mike W. Ray Tinker Public Affairs TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- Ensuring that Tinker's 26,000 military personnel and civilian employees are provided with clean air to breathe and safe water to drink is of vital importance. Tinker gets most of its drinking water from 22 functional on-base wells, and supplements that with water purchases from Oklahoma City. Brandt Fleharty, Drinking Water Program Manager in the 72nd ABW Civil Engineering Directorate, said that Tinker pumps an average of 2.376 million gallons of groundwater daily from its wells. Tinker purchased 63 million gallons of water from Oklahoma City in FY 2011 for use in Bldg. 9001, said Rex Stanford, Mechanical Engineer, 72nd ABW Civil Engineering Directorate. Tinker has more than 1,200 groundwater monitoring wells that are checked on a regular basis, and Oklahoma City samples its water frequently, to ensure that the water is safe to drink. As for air quality, Tinker is "a major facility with permitted emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds exceeding 250 tons each per year," said Fran Saunders, Tinker's Air Quality Program Manager. Even so, the Air Force base contributes only about 1 percent of total air emissions in Oklahoma County, she said. The state Department of Environmental Quality regulates air emissions associated with Tinker AFB, Ms. Saunders said. Sources of air emissions at Tinker include boilers, generators, surface coating operations, paint booths, storage tanks and fueling operations. The Tinker Air Quality Team is responsible for multiple records, databases, permits and regulatory submissions and other reports. Air quality in industrial facilities such as Bldgs. 3001 and 9001 is monitored regularly by the Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight of the 72nd ABW CE DIR. "We are in those buildings daily conducting routine and special surveys, which may include checking indoor air quality," said Douglas Moore, 76 MXW ESOH Liaison, Bioenvironmental Engineering. Their duties include hazardous noise surveys, radiation monitoring, and air sampling, to include checking engineering controls such as the ventilation equipment used to control dusts, vapors, and mists emitted during industrial processes. Some challenges of the large facilities include concentrated industrial processes, vehicular traffic, personnel occupancy loads and aging infrastructure.