PFAS remain in place, Schumer wants to keep it that way

Read the full article by Rick Karlin (Times Union)

“COHOES – The Department of Defense has, for now, held off on plans to send up to 12 truckloads of toxic firefighting foam to the Norlite aggregate plant for incineration.

But U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer on Tuesday said he was pushing to make sure the DOD holds off for at least the next six-to-eight months, in light of a recently passed moratorium on burning the material in Cohoes and concerns about the safety of disposing such substances by incineration.

Schumer wrote to top defense officials urging them to grant Norlite a postponement in their plans to accept and incinerate 58,000 gallons of the firefighting foam from a Virginia Naval station.

Infographic: The lingering threat of PFAS

The Defense Logistics Agency confirmed to Schumer’s office Tuesday that no shipments are headed for Cohoes, according to Schumer’s office.

‘I urge the DLA to grant Tradebe’s request for a six to eight month suspension of the Norlite-Tradebe waste disposal contract and to not force almost 60,000 gallons of AFFF upon Norlite and New York,’ Schumer wrote in a letter to Acting Navy Secretary James McPherson and Darrell Williams, the Pentagon’s defense logistics director.

Tradebe is the parent company of Norlite. It has a five-year contract to remove and incinerate the foam from military installations in a number of states.

But the Cohoes City Council, worried about the health effects of incineration, earlier this spring passed a one-year moratorium on the practice. AFFF or aqueous film-forming foam, has been a widely used fire suppressant on military bases and airports. But worries have emerged recently over the PFAS , or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances , that are in AFFFs.

PFAS are associated with a number of health problems…”