“JOINT BASE CAPE COD — Joint Base Cape Cod is included on a national list of military installations where contamination with possible links to cancer and other diseases has been detected in drinking water and groundwater in and around their sites…
‘The Air Force has been investigating PFOS and PFOA for multiple years,’ said Douglas Karson, the Air Force Civil Engineer Center’s community involvement lead. ‘It is what is going on at all the installations.’…
At Joint Base Cape Cod, two of the nine samples taken from public drinking water supplies located off-base exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended level of 70 parts per trillion.
Of the 73 off-base private wells sampled, 22 exceeded the standard…
Rose Forbes, remediation director at Joint Base Cape Cod, called the federal report ‘just a snapshot in time.’…
Karson said some progress has been made. Initially the base had 19 identified plumes, or pathways, where contamination was spreading. One of those has been signed off by government authorities as sufficiently clean to no longer require treatment. Several other plumes are showing significant improvement as well, but the base’s groundwater treatment system still treats 11 million gallons each day. The current expansion of the investigation could lead to the discovery of more contamination as the compound continues to travel in the groundwater…
Forbes cited some recent detection and remediation efforts.
A municipal well in Mashpee Village, which had exceeded the advisory level for the fluorinated compounds earlier last year, was shut down, she said. ‘We also found new contamination from the landfill, but in an area already being treated.’
Residents of a 93-unit mobile home park in Mashpee called Lakeside Estates were provided with bottled water when contamination was found, and the base has since hooked the mobile homes up to the municipal water system, Forbes said.”
Read the full article by Christine Legere