Read the full article by Jared Hayes and Brandin Inouye (EWG)
“The Pentagon has made almost no progress in cleaning up the military installations that are some of the most contaminated with the toxic ‘forever chemicals‘ known as PFAS, according to an EWG review of Defense Department records.
Of 50 Air Force or Navy bases with some of the highest levels of PFAS contamination, only nine have cleanup plans being developed under the Superfund law, according to the most recent documents made public by the Defense Department. Not a single cleanup plan has been finalized for those nine bases, and little actual cleanup has begun.
More than five years ago, under a mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency, Defense completed testing for PFAS in drinking water at 63 installations. EWG has since identified and mapped 703 military sites with known or suspected discharges of PFAS.
At the greatest number of the bases where records were reviewed by EWG – 21 sites – Defense has completed the inspection stage only, which includes determining how much PFAS is present, a preliminary stage of the eight steps outlined in the Superfund environmental remediation process (see chart below)…”