After a months-long investigation, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in report released on Thursday that it has found four areas on the East Hampton Airport property with very high levels of the chemical compounds that have been found in drinking water wells throughout the southern portion of Wainscott.
In two of the locations, the levels of PFOS, one of the two chemicals found, were four times the Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion—a bar that has itself been criticized as being many times higher than the dose that may actually pose health concerns.
The two sites of highest concentration were found on the airport facility itself, where plane crash training-and-response drills have been held.
The second highest concentrations were found under a cleared area at the northern end of one of the airport’s secondary runways, where the DEC report says training drills were staged.
"DEC’s Site Characterization for the East Hampton Airport site revealed four distinct Areas of Concern where additional study is needed to fully delineate the nature and extent of the identified contamination," said Michael Ryan, director of DEC’s Division of Environmental Remediation.
The DEC has also designated the neighboring Wainscott Sand & Gravel property as a site with potential additional contamination, because another mass casualty drill was held there in June 2000, and is working with the owners to establish a similar testing protocol and investigation as was done on the airport property over the last year.
Soon after the discovery of the chemical PFOS and PFOA in well water in Wainscott in October 2017, the town began offering to supply bottled water to all residents of Wainscott.
By last spring the town was pushing forward with providing grants to homeowners to install charcoal water filtration systems that can scrub out the two chemicals from well water and in the spring the town and Suffolk County Water Authority announced plans to extend water mains throughout the hamlet.
Last week, the town filed a lawsuit against the Bridgehampton Fire Department and East Hampton Village, which owns the East Hampton Fire Department, and the manufacturers and suppliers of the fire-suppressant foams that were used by the departments over the years.
The town has also been named as a defendant in a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of Wainscott homeowners—one of dozens of such suits that have been filed across the country over contamination of drinking water supplies by chemicals from firefighting foams.