Amid PFC Scandal, Congress Tells Pentagon To Disclose Water Contamination

Under a new deal struck by Congress, the Pentagon must disclose incidents of water contamination at military bases.

The effort it targeted at revealing locations where the military had used a firefighting foam that is now tainting groundwater across the country with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs).

“The spending bill for fiscal 2017 … included a provision that would require the Defense Department to identify all of the hundreds of military bases where drinking water may have been contaminated by firefighting foam,” E&E News reported.

“The provision amounts to the first federal mandate to the Defense Department to deal with the potentially widespread contamination, and what is likely to be billions of dollars' and years' worth of cleanup. The chemicals, known as PFOS and PFOA, have been linked to health risks, but are not regulated by the EPA,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The military is in the midst of testing for contamination at hundreds of sites across the country. The effort to test nearly 400 sites has costed over $150 million, but critics say it has been "slow and seemingly disjointed," according to a previous report in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

For over a year, the Pentagon has been working to list all the contamination sites, the Inquirer reported. Each branch of the military has responded separately to the contamination problem.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-PA, praised the inclusion of this language in the bill.

"I am pleased that the spending deal includes the language I secured to require greater transparency from the Department of Defense on the issue of water contamination in Bucks and Montgomery Counties. I will continue to work diligently on this issue to ensure Bucks and Montgomery County families can have peace of mind and resolution," he said, per the Inquirer.

Water contamination has been a major frustration for residents of Horsham and Willow Grove in the Philadelphia suburbs, where operations at former military sites polluted groundwater.

“About 70,000 residents were affected in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, where public water wells are undergoing remediation,” the Inquirer reported.

To read more about PFCs visit Water Online’s Source Water Contamination Solutions Center.