U.S. Air Force Won't Repay Water Districts For PFC Contamination

The U.S. Air Force is under fire for announcing it will not reimburse communities in Colorado for potentially contaminating their groundwater.

Air Force officials have no plans to fully reimburse Security, Widefield, and Fountain ”for $6 million they've spent responding to the crisis,” The Gazette reported.

Air Force officials signaled that over 70 percent of water district clean up costs will not be reimbursed, the report said

“And those uncompensated costs are expected to balloon, with the districts likely on the hook for $11 million of their $12.7 million response tab by the end of 2018,” the report said.

An email from the Air Force Civil Engineer Center said, per the report: "The Air Force does not have the authority to reimburse communities for costs incurred in dealing with environmental contamination issues."

In Security, Fountain, and Widefield, “officials have worked overtime since [early 2016] to remove higher-than-normal concentrations of perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, from the water supply,” Colorado Public Radio reported.

The message from the Air Force was issued despite findings by a military investigation that it played a role in the contamination.

“In a first-of-its-kind admission for the service [in July], Air Force investigators confirmed that toxic firefighting foam chemicals used at Peterson Air Force Base had leached into the surrounding groundwater. To fix the problem, Air Force officials are proceeding under a process similar to the federal Superfund program — a yearslong procedure for cleaning up complex environmental contamination. No Superfund designation, however, has been made,” The Gazette previously reported.

Locals are concerned about the long timeline for fixing the problem.

“Federal remediation work will push into the next decade, though some help may arrive before then,” The Gazette reported, citing Cornell Long of the Air Force Civil Engineering Center in San Antonio.

The U.S. EPA issued a health advisory last year about exposure to PFCs as various towns wage high-profile battles against the pollutants. PFCs are industrial contaminants and research has tied them to cancer.

“The 70 ppt level recommended by the EPA [last year] was a dramatic decrease over the agency’s prior, short-term recommended limit of 400 ppt,” The Intelligencer reported.

To read more about how communities pay for treatment costs visit Water Online’s Funding Solutions Center.