Navy officials participated in a town hall meeting March 20 to inform Point Loma residents how the Navy plans to cleanup 500,000 to 1.5 million gallons of fuel that seeped into the ground beneath a fuel depot. Since 1999, a significant amount of JP-5 and marine diesel fuel has seeped from three steel tanks at Naval Base Point Loma (NBPL), forming a plume on top of the water table nearly 50 feet underground. The tanks are located aboveground in an area of the base designated as the Defense Fuel Support Point, which provides Defense Energy Support Center fuel to all local and surrounding military bases via pipeline networks, tankers and vessels. The fuel leaked through small holes that developed in the bottom of tanks that are more than 70 years old.