Port Taranaki knew about groundwater contamination for more than a year before the public was told, documents show.
The contaminated water at test bores is not used for drinking.
The documents show the port learned in July 2017 about high levels of firefighting foam chemicals in one of several monitoring wells – 40 times drinking water guidelines – when it ran an environmental study before leasing the Omata Tank Farm.
This was six months before the public was first alerted to the contamination problem, when New Zealand Defence Force admitted at the end of last year it had contaminated water around several bases.
The council told the public last month about contaminated sites.
The regional council referred RNZ’s questions to the port company which it both owns and regulates.
Tests at wells on port land came up below guideline levels, he said.
Shell has admitted storing banned PFOS foam at both Omata and the nearby Paritūtū tank farm up until last month.
A controversial official report in the US has pushed for much lower safety thresholds.
* The documents released to RNZ are available by contacting the reporter.

If approved by the council after the public hearing, use of water from any well in the affected area will be prohibited unless an exception is granted by the EPA.
A few locations chose to keep their existing well, which was an option they had at the time.
Over the years, Dietlin said he believes everyone has switched to using city water, and he isn’t aware of anyone still using water from a potentially contaminated well.
If someone is found to still be using a well in the contamination zone, the city would pay the cost of hooking them into the Cadillac water system, if the proposed restrictions are approved.
Affected groundwater, which was discovered in the 1980s, has migrated northward to a residential area north of the industrial park in Haring Township.
According to the EPA, the Haring Township groundwater use restrictions have been strengthened since the last five-year review; however, existing city of Cadillac groundwater use restrictions still need to be made more robust.
The site’s long-term remedy included groundwater extraction and treatment, soil vapor extraction (SVE), and soil removal at another property in the industrial park.
An EPA report also states that risks and exposure pathways addressed by the cleanup include health risks from people ingesting or touching contaminants in soil and groundwater.
Contaminants and known carcinogens discovered as a result of Kysor’s activities include trichloroethane, acetone, chloroform, cyanide, tetrachloroethene, trichloroethene and chromium, among others.
The public hearing has been scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 4, at 6 p.m. at the Cadillac Municipal Complex, located at 200 N. Lake St.

Two hazardous chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, were commonly found in firefighting foams used at airports and military bases, before they were phased out between 2000 and 2006.
Chemicals used in coatings for products such as nonstick pans and stain repellent have become a lurking threat to drinking water supplies nationwide, prompting a call to better test for their presence in New York.
A group of county leaders, health officials and environmental directors, in a letter last week, asked the state health department and federal Environmental Protection Agency to require water testing for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).
“It’s a contaminant that is existing in the environment, so we need a better way to identify the chemical and get rid of it,” Mr. Acquario said.
Brad J. Hutton, the deputy commissioner of the New York State Public Health Office, said the state advises that more than 2 parts per trillion is potentially dangerous and should be monitored by state or local governments.
The state also established a Drinking Water Task Force, which the letter is addressed to, essential to helping with cleaning up contamination and installing carbon-activated filters in water systems where PFOA or PFOS is found as a first step, Mr. Acquario said.
Through the task force, the state randomly selected several public water suppliers to begin testing for the PFOA and PFOS in their drinking water.
Public suppliers are required to test for nearly 100 contaminants, but more than 80,000 potential chemicals exist.
Mr. Acquario said if there is a serious contamination issue requiring a new municipal treatment system to be put in place, the cost is between $25 million and $35 million, with an additional $500,000 in labor costs.
The companies allegedly designed, manufactured, marketed and sold foams used for fire fighting and fire fighting training at Stewart Air National Guard Base, Stewart International Airport, Francis S. Gabreski Airport, former Plattsburgh Air Force Base and former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome.

The search for a source of PFAS contamination spreading in the Huron River across five Southeast Michigan counties points to Wixom, where city officials told the state in June that its wastewater treatment plant has been sending contaminated water into a tributary.
The discovery comes as the state seeks tests from 95 municipal wastewater treatment plants with significant industrial processing.
It also comes as the state investigates PFAS contamination across the five-county Huron River Watershed that escalated Friday into a widespread "do not eat" fish advisory and signaled heightened concern about the chemical levels in southeast Michigan.
According to a letter sent Aug. 6 from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to the operator in charge of the Wixom wastewater treatment plant, PFOS at 290 parts per trillion (ppt) was measured in water discharged into Norton Creek in southwest Oakland County.
Test results sent to the city show that one of two Adept Plastic Finishing Inc. factories in Wixom sent high levels of the contaminant into the wastewater treatment plant.
Documents of water testing at Adept’s Plant 4 show a PFOS reading of 28,000 during a mid-May test.
Adept received the results on June 19.
The city notified the MDEQ of those results on June 27, according to documents.
The city must test its effluent monthly, according to the letter from the DEQ.
Dean said the state has not yet identified the boundaries for the contamination.

Autoplay:Play Video0:00 0:00: 0%: 0%LIVE -0:00 DETROIT (WXYZ) – Detroit Public School Community District leaders worked to get bottled water stocked before school starts Tuesday.
Superintendent Nikolai Vitti ordered new testing of all schools in the spring.
Over the summer results came in for 24 schools.
Martin said teachers are pleased to see the district shut down water consumption at every school for now but at the same time are frustrated to be at this point.
“We have had teachers who have complained of health issues over the years and they believed it could be attributed to the water they’re consuming,” Martin said.
The district is planning to have community meetings to address concerns.
District leaders are hoping that by providing bottled water they can make sure teachers and students for now don’t have to worry about the situation and instead can focus on learning.
Copyright 2018 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Print this article Back to Top

Arsenic and fluoride contamination in water has been a nagging problem in the State.
It is hard to believe that people in as many as 3881 habitations spread over 21 districts in the State have been using arsenic and fluoride contaminated water as part of their food and other purposes, over the years.
According to sources in the State Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department, the Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation is coming up with 122 schemes under the NWQSM to mitigate arsenic and fluoride contamination in Assam, covering eight of the 21 affected districts.
The schemes are going to cover 1,439 arsenic and 7 fluoride contaminated habitations in the eight districts.
The detailed project reports (DPRs) of the schemes are under process.
While mitigating arsenic and fluoride contamination in water in 1,446 (1,439+7) habitations in eight districts, the schemes are set to cover 314 en-route habitations that are not arsenic and fluoride affected.
Arsenic and fluoride contamination in Assam leaves very few districts untouched.
The worst among the 21 arsenic affected districts in the State is Jorhat with 959 affected habitations, followed by Baksa with 821 habitations, Nalbari with 752 habitations and Barpeta with 458 habitations.
The State also received Rs 11.57 crore in March 2016 for the commissioning of water purification plans as short-term measures to ensure supply of safe drinking water in rural areas affected with arsenic and fluoride contamination.
However, habitations in as many as 21 districts in the State are still supplied with contaminated water.

‘We can concentrate and purify the sample magnetically, without any cultivation or enrichment techniques,’ said Dr Daniel Schaffhauser, chief technology officer at Swiss-based rqmicro, the company that developed the platform as part of a project called CellCount.
Focused testing The sample is mixed with a cocktail of specific antibodies developed by rqmicro that are coupled with tiny magnetic beads, as well as fluorescent labels.
Once a target pathogen binds with the antibody, a magnetic field draws the beaded cell away from the rest of the sample.
The detection system has been developed to maintain its accuracy in the field, rather than the stable conditions of a research laboratory.
The system can be used for near-continuous monitoring of drinking water supplies and is already in use by water laboratories in Europe to detect legionella, with rapid results helping to locate sources of infection.
‘The technology is very general, so we see applications not only in drinking water, but also in broader microbial diagnostics,’ Dr Schaffhauser said.
Rather than doing one-off tests when a pathogen has already been discovered, however, another approach is to continuously monitor water to provide an early-warning system that a particular bacteria may be present.
‘We are particularly pleased with its effectiveness in helping to prevent people becoming sick, providing an early warning system for contamination of drinking water systems.’ Its first commercialised system, BactoSense, rapidly counts the total number of bacteria in a water sample, one of the crucial tests used by utilities to assess water quality.
coli is recognised worldwide as an indicator for faecal contamination and is a routine test for municipal water supply systems,’ said Dr Luigino Grasso, bNovate’s chief technology officer.
‘So the system does not need any human intervention for up to a couple of months, even if it is testing water several times a day.’ Through automation and monitoring from a distance, bNovate has reduced the amount of human intervention and eliminated the need for laboratory time, helping to shrink the price of BactoSense water tests to about €1 each – a fraction of the costs associated with older testing methods.

Minister of Health Adeela Hamoud announced during her last visit to Basra that 1,500 severe cases of diarrhea had been recorded, but there was no cholera in the region.
Meanwhile, Director-General of the Public Health Directorate in Basra Riad Abdul-Amir said that about 17,000 cases of colic and diarrhea were reported due to contaminated water over the past two weeks, warning that around 20 percent of those cases carried the symptoms of cholera.
"The hospitals in Basra receive about 1,500 such cases on a daily basis," Abdul-Amir said.
On Monday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi urged local authorities to address the water contamination issue and ensure sufficient water deliveries from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
He also asked the Ministry of Energy to provide fuel for water tankers heading to Basra.
The religious authority in Najaf and the Secretariat of Hussein Shrine in Karbala also addressed the issue and formed a crisis unit to help the people overcome the crisis.
"The Representative of Supreme Religious Authority, Sheikh Abdul-Mehdi El-Kerbelaey, held an extensive meeting with various officials of the Shrine, including those from the finance, maintenance, electricity and mechanisms departments, to discuss the formation of a crisis unit to save the people of the city of Basra," the media department of the Shrine said in a statement.
The statement pointed out that Kerbelaey ordered the members of the cell to visit Basra to proceed with the maintenance of desalination plants and street lights, in addition to providing the residents with suitable drinking water.
Kerbelaey said during the Friday sermon that despite all appeals to the government “for a temporary solution for water contamination in Basra, the efforts the government is making are still below the threshold for a temporary relief.” The Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights in Basra indicated that Abo al-Khasib General Hospital in Basra receives daily more than 400 people sickened by polluted water.
The Commission noted that Abo al-Khasib is the only hospital capable of treating such cases.

Adobe Stock Hundreds of residents in two neighborhoods near Wichita, Kansas, drank contaminated water for years without knowing it.
SALT LAKE CITY — Hundreds of residents in two neighborhoods near Wichita, Kansas, drank contaminated water for years without knowing it, according to The Wichita Eagle.
The Eagle’s investigative report found that Kansas officials allowed the drinking of contaminated water to go on for years “despite warning signs of contamination close to water wells used for drinking, washing and bathing.” The state first discovered dry cleaning materials had contaminated groundwater while they investigated a possible expansion of a Kiwk Shop back in 2011.
The Kansas Department of Health didn’t act for six years, even though it knew about the water.
According to the Eagle’s report, the state “didn’t test private wells less than a mile away.
Nor did it notify residents that their drinking wells could be contaminated with dry cleaning chemicals, known as perchloroethylene, so they could test the water themselves.” And, even worse, some fear that the contamination could happen at 22 other sites where the state hasn’t checked yet.
Read the entire piece at Kansas.com.
Play Video Play Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Remaining Time -0:00 This is a modal window.
Foreground — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Opaque Background — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Default Monospace Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Sans-Serif Casual Script Small Caps Defaults Done

Emerging contaminants have been detected near the Kennedy Space Center and the highest recorded levels of PFOS and PFOA in alligator blood has been found The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has discovered groundwater contamination, including perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Fla., that exceeds the U.S. EPA’s advisory level.
While the contamination has only been confirmed at one groundwater site, the findings have prompted residents in the Satellite Beach area to question if the contamination in drinking water may be responsible for a cancer cluster, according to Florida Today.
The highest levels of PFOS and PFOA ever measured in alligators have been discovered in the blood of alligators between 2012 and 2015 near the space center, according to research published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
In another study published in the journal Chemosphere last year, Biologies Russ Lowers found alligators with high plasma fluorinated compounds near the Shuttle Landing Facility and the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout retention pond.
Because EPA currently provides no groundwater target cleanup levels for the emerging contaminants, NASA has said that it will continue to test its groundwater next year to determine the scope of pollution and that they will be prepared to act when EPA issues new target levels.