[CPEO-MEF] PFAS: "The Pentagon’s contamination time bomb: Cleanup backlog outpaces funding"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

News Release
Environmental Working roup
May 15, 2023

The Pentagon’s contamination time bomb: Cleanup backlog outpaces funding

WASHINGTON – The Department of Defense is failing to confront an almost $4 billion increase in the cost of cleaning up contaminated sites, many polluted by the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. And its cleanup budget is falling behind, a new Environmental Working Group analysis finds.

The estimated total for cleaning up DOD sites has soared to $31 billion, up by $3.7 billion from 2016 to 2021, the last year the Pentagon provided estimates. Yet its cleanup budget increased just $400 million over the same period. It can’t tackle PFAS cleanup properly with this level of funding. 

Some sites plagued by these toxic chemicals might not get cleaned up for more than half a century.

The gap between the cost of cleaning up PFAS contamination and the military budget has grown at a record pace. But the Pentagon has low-balled its budget requests to Congress year after year. In fact, the DOD has asked for less cleanup funding in recent years than it received in 2016.

…

For the entire release, see
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2023/05/pentagons-contamination-time-bomb-cleanup-backlog-outpaces

—

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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