Water tests show nearly 3,000 private wells located near 63 active and former U.S. military bases are contaminated with “forever chemicals” at levels higher than what federal regulators consider safe for drinking.
According to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that analyzed Department of Defense testing data, 2,805 wells spread across 29 states were contaminated with at least one of two types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, above 4 parts per trillion, a limit proposed earlier this year by the Environmental Protection Agency. That new drinking water standard is expected to take effect by the end of the year.
But contamination in those wells was lower than the 70 parts per trillion threshold the Pentagon uses to trigger remediation.
EWG researchers said they did not know how many people rely on the wells for drinking, cooking, and bathing, but the 76 tested locations represent just a fraction of the private wells near 714 current or former military sites spread across the U.S. According to EWG, Texas had nearly a third of the contaminated wells, with 909. Researchers recorded clusters of tainted wells in both urban and rural areas, from Riverside County and Sacramento in California to Rapid City, South Dakota, and Helena, Montana.
“They are going to have to test more bases,” said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst with EWG, in an interview with KFF Health News….
