In a report released last month, the Pentagon found the water at or around 126 military installations contains potentially harmful levels of perfluorinated compounds, which have been linked to cancers and development delays for fetuses and infants.
Perfluorinated compounds are man-made chemicals, which can be used to make items heat or water resistant.
You can find them in everyday household, food and clothing items and take out food wrappers.
At military bases, like Fairchild Air Force Base in Airway Heights, they are used in a concentrated foam to put out aircraft fires.
In May 2017, wells in Airway Heights were found to have been contaminated with firefighting foam contaminants used between 1970 and 2016.
This crisis impacted at least 9,000 people within the affected area.
The Air Force brought in bottled water to hand out, and the City of Airway Heights flushed the wells of nearly 25 million gallons of water.
RELATED: Airway Heights Water Crisis Update: Air Force engineers installing filtration systems at homes Fairchild wasn’t the only military installation with the issue.
Additionally, DoD tested 2,668 groundwater wells both on and in the surrounding off-base community and found that 61 percent of them tested above the EPA’s recommended levels.
The DoD is also working to phase out the firefighting foam with replacements that do not contain the harmful chemicals.