On July 6, 2026 the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense/War (DOD/DoW) for Energy, Installations, and Environment Dale Marks issued a Memorandum “Clarifying Guidance for Taking Interim Actions to Address Releases of Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid [PFOS] and Perfluorooctanoic Acid [PFOA] from Department of War Installations or Locations Impacting Private Drinking Water.” See https://www.acq.osd.mil/eie/eer/ecc/pfas/docs/policies/Sec317_Guidance.pdf The memo extends the provision of alternate drinking water supplies to residences with private well contamination to certain homes that were excluded by a previous memo, from September 2024, which limited such actions to wells with more than 12 parts per trillion (ppt) of these compounds, as opposed to EPA’s 4 ppt drinking water standards. That memo generated an outcry that resulted in language in the fiscal year 2026 Defense Authorization Act (Section 317) requiring such action. The clarification is a step in the right direction, but the Department has not yet agreed to address contamination in all private wells exceeding EPA’s standards. It’s not clear how many additional installations, let alone private wells, are covered by the new memo. It states, “DoW took interim actions at approximately 55 installations to address off-base drinking water wells/systems where levels of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) were above 70 parts per trillion (ppt) which was the level DoW previously used to trigger a removal action.” DOD/DoW is not overtly challenging EPA’s drinking water standards, already delayed by the Trump Administration. Instead, it considers its approach to be priority setting. But that doesn’t excuse either of its memos. In the 1990s, I was an active member of a federal advisory committee, the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee (FFERDC), convened to develop a common approach to remedial priority setting among federal polluting agencies, U.S. EPA, state regulators and attorneys general, tribes, and environmental and local government representatives. FFERDC explored how cleanup budgets are built and appropriations are allocated. It also elevated public participation in spearheading the formation of cleanup advisory boards at contaminated Defense and Energy Department facilities. Its landmark Final Report may be downloaded from https://www.energy.gov/documents/fferdcpdf . One of FFERDC’s consensus recommendations was the Risk Plus approach to priority setting: “‘Risk Plus Other Factors’ Priority Setting For some people the term ‘risk management’ is understood to mean the consideration of factors in addition to risk to human health and the environment when making decisions about how to best manage or reduce such risks. For others, risk management still connotes too strong of an emphasis on human health risk. In other words, in certain instances factors that may have very little to do with human health risk may become the overriding factors in setting cleanup priorities. For this reason, the Committee has come to use the term ‘risk plus other factors’ to refer to the consideration of risk to human health and the environment along with other important factors. “The Committee supports efforts of the regulated agencies to use risk-based priority setting to build their cleanup budgets, as long as priorities are set with the agreement of the regulators and in consultation with other stakeholders. In general, high-priority activities should be funded before medium-priority activities, and those should be funded before low-priority activities. “The assignment of priority levels to all agreed-upon activities or sites should provide the basis for reconsidering out year milestones and altering programmatic plans when appropriated funding does not match requested levels and when the affected facility has demonstrated it is developing and implementing cost savings measures. This applies to increases as well as decreases. Thus, even when agencies must respond quickly to Congressional actions, their changes should reflect regulator and public stakeholder input, to the greatest extent possible.” (emphasis added) (p. 102 of the PDF) As the language indicates, setting environmental response priorities should not be the unilateral decisions of the regulated (polluting) agencies. But few in the federal government remember FFERDC and its consequential improvements to federal cleanup. In an interview with Inside EPA, I likened the government’s lack of institutional memory to the “pharaoh who did not know Joseph.” I recognize that the Department cannot clean up everything, everywhere, all at once. But in consultation with regulators and the affected public, it can do a much better job, at relatively low cost, of providing “safe” water to homes impacted by PFAS from military groundwater pollution. Lenny
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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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