Read the full article by Press Release, St. Mary’s River Watershed Association (The Bay Net)
“St. Inigoes, MD – We are all living a Hollywood horror plot line as we attempt to avoid getting and spreading Covid-19. While the Association is effectively closed for much business, we have been busy putting together a plan for PFAS testing and a white paper on the PFAS threat. Soon we will publish this paper on our website although it will remain a living document over the next few months as we continue to research and gather information.
The Maryland Department of the Environment released a statement earlier this month indicating that they have developed a plan to test in the St. Inigoes area in April with results to be made public in May. But due to the Governor’s stay-at-home order, the testing is being postponed, according to an April 6 article in the Bay Journal, ‘MD to test water, oysters in St. Mary’s River for toxic chemicals.‘
The St. Mary’s River Watershed Association Board of Directors met last week and decided that additional independent testing was necessary in order to provide transparency to the testing process and to validate results. The Association is looking to test for 28 PFAS chemicals using an independent EPA-certified lab and qualified sampling technicians. This will be very costly. Quotes from certified labs run around $1,000 per site to test water and oysters. This threat surfaced in February with a test result at Rosecroft Point (this test is questioned and needs to be verified). We did not budget for PFAS testing and our annual fund raiser may not occur due to Covid-19 stay-at-home protocols. Therefore, we are asking our members to consider making a donation to help cover this cost. We’d like to test 15 sites and have already raised $2500 leaving us significantly short of funding…”