Base Clean-Up Team Discusses Water Contamination.
The Joint Base Cape Cod Cleanup Team met Wednesday evening, April 12, at Camp Edwards to discuss the US Air Force’s investigations of potentially dangerous contaminants in groundwater and in public and private wells in Bourne, Falmouth and Mashpee.
Mark Hilyard of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, which has been overseeing the cleanup of the base and its affiliated groundwater pollution plumes since the 1990s, gave updates about residential well sampling at sites near the base’s flight line and in the area of fuel spills from two tanker truck rollovers.
In the Ashumet Valley area in Falmouth, because of contaminants detected within and near Ashumet and Johns ponds, Mr. Hilyard said 70 residents are receiving bottled water and the Air Force has installed 11 whole-house charcoal filtration systems.
The next round of testing will come at the end of this month.
“We are sharing information with others across the country who are dealing with similar contamination events,” Robert Lim from the MassDEP said.
The project will connect each of the mobile home park’s 70 homes to the public water supply and redo its entire water system.
Contaminated groundwater flow is believed to have infiltrated one of seven Mashpee Water District public supply wells.
A third and potentially final sampling round is scheduled for later this month, he said.
The National Guard Bureau launched the program in 1996 to investigate possible areas of groundwater and soil contamination on the base.

jmcmenemy@seacoastonline.com @JeffreyMcMenemy PORTSMOUTH — Sens.
Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, are introducing bipartisan legislation aimed at improving federal efforts to identify the public health effects of emerging contaminants, such as the PFCs that contaminated a city-owned well at the former Pease Air Force Base.
Shaheen noted that PFCs and other emerging contaminants – like cyanotoxins – are increasingly being detected in drinking water around the country.
A state Department of Environmental Services official listed a number of health effects — including cancer — he says are associated with exposure to PFOS and PFOA in drinking water.
The legislation, according to Shaheen, will: • Direct the EPA to create a program to provide federal support and technical assistance to communities with emerging contaminants in their water.
• Direct the EPA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to convene an interagency working group to “improve federal efforts to identify and respond to emerging contaminants.
• Compel the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop an “interagency federal research strategy to improve the identification, analysis and treatment of emerging contaminants.” Portsmouth resident Andrea Amico, who led the successful fight to get anyone exposed to PFCs at the Pease International Tradeport to have their blood tested, said she is “really excited to learn about the proposed legislation by Sen. Shaheen focusing on emerging contaminants.” “I think communities like Pease will benefit from this legislation because it takes a more proactive approach to addressing emerging contaminants,” Amico said Monday.
Amico also wants the EPA to set health advisories for all the PFCs, not just PFOS and PFOA and hopes Shaheen’s bill will inspire them to do that.
“It puts some money into it, it puts some force behind it.” Messmer, who is one of the founders of the New Hampshire Safe Water Alliance, added that her group “applauds Sen. Shaheen for introducing legislation that would improve the state and federal response to emerging contaminants.” “NHSWA was founded to advocate for safe drinking water across New Hampshire where contaminants such as PFCs and 1,4-dioxane threaten the drinking and surface water resources of many cities and towns,” Messmer said.
“NHSWA feels that this proactive legislation is a critical step in protecting our drinking water and reducing chronic illness.” Portman, in a statement Monday, said the legislation will improve federal efforts to identify the health impacts of unregulated contaminants found in our drinking water sources.”

HYANNIS — A Manhattan-based law firm is seeking clients who believe they may have been poisoned by contamination of the Hyannis water supply.
Napoli Shkolnik, PLLC began running advertisements on Facebook this week in connection with the planned class action.
The firm has created a website for the potential action: massachusettswater.napolilaw.com.
“It is not uncommon for these so-called mass tort law firms to reach out with public announcements to identify potential clients,” Barnstable Assistant Attorney Charles McLaughlin said.
Show more… Barnstable town officials have issued public health advisories for the Hyannis water system twice since 2015.
The chemicals are typically found in the types of firefighting foams that have been used in the past at the Barnstable County Fire and Rescue Training Academy and Barnstable Municipal Airport.
“This can happen very fast, in just a couple of weeks.” While water advisories in the Hyannis water supply area have been issued only in recent years, Caro suspects some residents may have had long-term exposure to the contaminants, since firefighting foams containing the contaminants could have been used for decades at the fire training academy and airport.
“We suspect it was significant.” She said there also are potential health dangers for those who drank the contaminated water for only a short period of time.
In addition, the town and county have filed separate lawsuits seeking damages from vendors of firefighting foams containing the toxic chemicals.
Most recently, the county went a step further and added Entergy Nuclear Generation Company, the Hyannis Fire District and the Barnstable County Fire Chiefs Association — all users of the fire training academy — as defendants in the case that has been brought by the town.

JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST — Military records show that tens of millions of gallons of water from two contaminated wells on the joint base were used to supply drinking water to base workers and residents over the past decade, despite base officials stating that the wells were used only to back up the main well.
Despite repeated assurances from joint base officials that drinking wells found to be contaminated by PFOS and PFOA are "backup" wells, records provided by the base to this news organization show otherwise.
And the military’s own well pumping records show the wells contributed about 16 percent of the system’s drinking water from 2007 to 2016.
From May 2014 to April 2015, records show that the two contaminated wells supplied 25 million gallons to the Hill system, as the main well was undergoing maintenance.
That means about three-quarters of the water going into the Hill system was coming from those contaminated wells during that time.
When asked if it’s likely that base residents and workers served by the Hill system had consumed water from the shallow aquifers, Eagan wrote: "Probably.
The report concluded that the two main Lakehurst drinking water systems — the Hill and the Helo — "are subject to potential contamination" by the chemicals.
Robert Delaney, an environmental quality specialist with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, has been helping investigate contamination from perfluorinated chemical compounds like PFOS and PFOA around the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in that state.
Because the EPA’s limit is 70 ppt, and the contaminated wells were found to be about three times higher, at least 33 percent of the water had to come from the contaminated wells in a given month to reach the 70-ppt threshold, even after mixing the contaminated water with cleaner water.
This news organization has requested full pumping records for all wells drawing water from the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer and all wells on the base that have been tested for PFOS and PFOA.

Water on, off N.J. military base contaminated with chemicals, base says.
Tests on several water sources on and off Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst show contamination from two chemicals contained in firefighting foam used on the base for decades, the base said.
The testing is ongoing and being completed as part of a comprehensive environmental effort by the U.S. Air Force to ferret out contamination after prior tests in ground and surface waters on base found elevated levels of PFOS and PFOA, the base said.
Dustin Roberts said.
Of 131 off-base private drinking water wells tested, three were contaminated, and one had combined PFOS/PFOA levels of 1,392 parts per trillion, Roberts said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory level – or HAL – for PFOS and PFOA is 70 parts per trillion.
On base, the program has tested approximately 165 groundwater monitoring wells and 28 drinking water sources – 27 of them wells and one surface intake that is off- base.
Of those, 124 of the monitoring wells were contaminated and two base drinking water sources, two shallow wells on the Lakehurst part of the base, were contaminated, Roberts said.
Such systems were commonly installed in aircraft hangars, he said.
Roberts said the Air Force at the base is concerned with the contamination overall, but is focusing on impacts off base.

Water contaminated on, near Joint Base — chemicals thousands of times higher than fed standards.
LAKEHURST — Foam used by the military at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst has contaminated several water sources on and off the base, according to a report.
The Air Force has been testing for perfluoroctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), an unregulated chemical used to make a firefighting foam to extinguish petroleum fires.
The foam is the source of the contamination at the base, which like other bases across the country over several decades, has dumped thousands upon thousands of gallons of the toxins into the ground.
According to NJ.com, results from wells on the base show thousands of times higher than the federal government’s health advisory level for drinking water, while three of 131 private, off-base wells tested for high levels.
Tests of water sources used by the surrounding communities of Jackson, Manchester and Pemberton came back with negative results, according to the report.
The chemicals are also used to make Teflon, Scotchgard, food wrappers and textiles.
The Joint Base will provide complete results to New Jersey 101.5 on Wednesday.
Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com.
More from New Jersey 101.5

A pair of hazardous chemicals used for decades in firefighting at Joint Base McGuire/Dix/Lakehurst have contaminated ground, surface, and drinking water on and near the base, a spokesman said last week, with tests showing levels 20 to thousands of times higher in some samples than federally recommended standards. Three of 131 private wells tested at homes off the base show evidence of the fluorinated chemicals known as PFOS and PFOA, Staff Sgt. Dustin Roberts said Friday, with one home’s drinking water containing 1,392 parts per trillion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory for these chemicals has set 70 parts per trillion as its recommended level. Roberts said the base was providing the affected homes with bottled water and was studying ways to remediate the problem. None of the affected private wells serve schools or other public institutions, he said. Two shallow wells that provide drinking water to the base showed levels as high as 215 parts per trillion, according to Roberts. He said he did not know how much of the base’s drinking water comes from…

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Following high levels of the contaminant PFOA in Hoosick Falls drinking water and busted pipes and lead contamination in Flint, Michigan, water quality is taking a forefront in both chambers of New York’s government.
“The older stuff is definitely dilapidated.
Some places like troy still use wooden pipes.
Senate Republicans want to invest three billion more than the governor to prevent water contamination, clean up pollution and protect water sources.
Assembly Democrats are concerned spending more could put New York in a budget hole.
“Does it push our debt limit over our limit, which I think it does and I think that’s something we need to be very mindful of,” Assemblyman John McDonald III said.
Scott says plans are ready to improve water quality in New York, they just need the money to make it happen.
“We need more funding to get the money to pay for all this stuff,” Scott said.
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WESTFIELD, Mass. (The Westfield News) – For city resident Kristen Mello, the desire for knowledge exists because of concern. That’s why she started an online petition asking for blood testing for residents who may have been exposed to city water that had a possible contamination of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as perfluorinated carbons (PFCs), through the city’s public water supply wells. “The contaminated wells were taken offline but before that I drank this water for 30 years,” Mello said. “We deserve to know what our exposure is.” Over the summer, two of the city’s eight public drinking water wells were taken offline due to both having levels of PFAS or PFCs that was above a lifetime exposure limit advisory given by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to the EPA, who lowered the acceptable amount of Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)—types of PFAS—in drinking water from 600 parts per trillion to 70 parts per trillion in June of last year in a health advisory, the compound has a potential to be linked to health issues. According to the EPA’s advisory, studies on laboratory animals that were “informed by epidemiological studies of human populations” showed that certain levels of the substances may result in adverse health effects, including effects on children’s development, livers, kidneys, thyroids and immune systems, as well as risks of cancer. However, according to the ATSDR’s public health statement on perfluoroakyls: “It is difficult to interpret the results of these studies because they are not consistent; some studies have found associations, but others looking at the same…

That’s why she started an online petition asking for blood testing for residents who may have been exposed to city water that had a possible contamination of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as perfluorinated carbons (PFCs), through the city’s public water supply wells.
“The contaminated wells were taken offline but before that I drank this water for 30 years,” Mello said.
“We deserve to know what our exposure is.” Over the summer, two of the city’s eight public drinking water wells were taken offline due to both having levels of PFAS or PFCs that was above a lifetime exposure limit advisory given by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Even though some studies have found significant associations between serum perfluoroalkyl levels and adverse health effects, it does not mean that perfluoroalkyls caused these effects.
Mello believes that it is possible that exposure to the PFAS may have occurred to residents as early as the 1950s, when the online petition said the firefighting foam were first used on the airport.
“We are happy that they took the wells offline but prior to 2015 we didn’t know, so the only way to know is to get the blood testing done,” Mello said.
According to a New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (NH DHHS) press release, “a positive test result for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) from a well that serves the Pease Tradeport and the New Hampshire Air National Guard base at Pease” was found, and the well in question was taken offline—similar to the situation that occurred in Westfield.
The website reported that the NH DHHS eventually “responded to the community’s request to provide blood testing for the people at Pease exposed to contaminated well water (prior to May 2014) by offering two rounds of testing in 2015.” Also according to the website, the blood tests for Pease residents came back with a higher amount of PFCs than what was found in a 2011-2012 study that was done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
Mello said that the testing was also facilitated through the ATSDR, who she also reached out to regarding her concerns.
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