[CPEO-MEF] PFCs: "Warrington [PA] legislator hopes bill can force military's hand in well cleanups"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Warrington legislator hopes bill can force military's hand in well cleanups

by Kyle Bagenstose
Intelligencer (PA)
May 15, 2017

The military and the Bucks and Montgomery communities whose drinking water was polluted by chemicals used at area bases have reached an impasse. State Rep. Kathy Watson, R-144, of Warrington, believes her new bill can break the deadlock.

In Warrington, Horsham, and Warminster, 16 public wells owned by three water authorities have been closed in the past three years due to contamination with perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. The unregulated, toxic chemicals were used for decades in firefighting foams at a trio of former and current military bases, where the chemicals sank into the water table and were sucked back up into public wells as well as hundreds of private wells.

The military has agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to install carbon filtration systems on the 16 wells, which are contaminated above 70 parts per trillion, the level the federal Environmental Protection Agency says is safe. The three water authorities, which serve a combined 70,000 people, want more: in 2016, they each passed zero-tolerance plans to clean their water sources to nondetectable levels, which are about 5 parts per trillion, at most.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.theintell.com/news/horsham-pfos/warrington-legislator-hopes-bill-can-force-military-s-hand-in/article_c78cae5a-374b-11e7-a3fc-1f6eea73e1ff.html

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

_______________________________________________
Military mailing list
Military@lists.cpeo.org
http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/military-cpeo.org