[CPEO-MEF] PFAS: "The Navy has shut down public access to environmental records in Hawaii."

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Hawaii’s Setting Sun
The Navy has shut down public access to environmental records in Hawaii.

By Pat Elder
Military Poisons
July 6, 2022

In March of this year, my daughter Holly sampled water from a canal that drains into the ocean at Barber’s Point in Kapolei, Oahu, Hawaii.  She found alarming concentrations of PFAS.  

Naval Air Station Barbers Point is a former Navy airfield that closed in 1999 and was renamed Kalaeloa Airport.  It is likely the Navy used firefighting foams containing PFAS during regular firefighting drills for 25 years on base. 

…

My concern for public health led me to examine the Navy’s “Administrative Records” for Barbers Point. These records, in PDF format online, track environmental reporting on naval installations. I hoped to find data on the PFAS concentrations in surface water and groundwater so I could compare them to the dangerous levels Holly found. 

…

Although 2,426 records appear in the index for Barbers Point dating back to 1994, the listing ends after 12/31/20, so there could be quite a bit going on that we don’t know about. The information I am seeking is no longer available on the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) website.  Records are only available by filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Navy is claiming that all administrative record files contain sensitive information protected by the Freedom of Information Act.

The Navy has not released data it has collected on PFAS contamination on Oahu. It could dwarf the Red Hill contamination.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.militarypoisons.org/latest-news/a6zqix9itvwiyxzh8s0xhxn18ifzi4

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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