State Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, has filed several bills to regulate PFAS. (Steph Solis, masslive.com/TNS)
CHICOPEE, Mass. (Tribune News Service) — In an open, grassy field at Westover Air Reserve Base, firefighting training took place several times a year from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. An estimated 4,800 gallons of a specialized suppressant was sprayed there.
Decades later, these man-made chemicals still lurk in the soil — and below it.
Groundwater underneath the field has levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) thousands of times higher than the state considers safe to drink, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found in a 2018 report. Luckily, the city gets its drinking water from the Quabbin Reservoir. But the PFAS contamination still puts the site in the Department of Defense’s “high risk” category.
These so-called “forever chemicals” are a class of thousands of manufactured substances and found in a range of products from clothing to packaging. They do not break down easily and infiltrate the environment from sources like landfills or firefighting foam. At certain levels they can be harmful to human health.
Westfield has the most well-known and likely most serious contamination in western Massachusetts. The chemicals were found in the city’s drinking water system years ago and the community continues to deal with the environmental cleanup.
But these chemicals are present across the region.
More than 100 public drinking water systems in the commonwealth have detected levels of PFAS above the state’s maximum, the Attorney General’s Office alleges in a lawsuit against 3M and other manufacturers of PFAS-containing firefighting foam. The chemicals have been found in homeowners’ private wells. The state formed a specialized task force on PFAS and has enacted regulations — some of the strictest in the country for drinking water. The federal government is also considering new rules.
At Westover, more site testing is expected this spring to pinpoint “the full nature and extent” of PFAS contamination, according to Rodney B. Furr, chief of public affairs at the base. The report will look at health and environmental risks and be made public, Furr said in a statement.
There are more than 700 places where the military or National Guard may have used PFAS, according to the Department of Defense’s PFAS Task Force. The department operates on a “worst first” basis — meaning the government ranks cleanups based on pollution severity.
In Chicopee, the 2018 military report looks at PFAS test results at several locations on the base.
At its highest, levels of PFOS and PFOA, two PFAS chemicals, were found at 300,000 parts per trillion in the groundwater at a former firefighting training area. The federal government is considering making its allowable levels in drinking water for those two chemicals each 4 parts per trillion.
Though contamination is high, the report doesn’t indicate a way it can reach people — aside from a swimming area at a nearby state park. The PFAS contamination is “a potential, though not immediate, hazard to human health,” the report says. It recommends further study, which is underway.
The Restoration Advisory Board, the primary way the base shares environmental cleanup information with the public, has not met since 2019 because of the pandemic, according to Furr. The board will meet next in 2025. To date, there have not been outreach events or invitations to the community for input, Furr said.
The base’s PFAS contamination makes up one sentence in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s 74-page lawsuit complaint against the foam manufacturers.
PFAS detections in public drinking water
PFAS contamination has popped up in drinking water systems across the Pioneer Valley, from Northfield to Monson, according to state data.
Public water systems include city water departments and much smaller systems at places like gyms, schools and some businesses. Any system that provides water from a source like a well to 25 people or more a day, for at least 60 days a year, is a public water system in the eyes of the state and is subject to certain regulations.
Drinking water in most public systems can have no more than 20 parts per trillion of PFAS6 — what the state calls a sum of six different PFAS chemicals. That’s the equivalent of one drop of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Public systems that provide water to a transient group, like at a restaurant or community center, are not subject to the 20 parts per trillion limit, but the state still required them to test and report results by mid-2022.
In Monson, water at a gym has consistently tested above the state’s limit for PFAS6, most recently testing high in January. Ardor CrossFit and Fitness received a $40,000 grant from the state last year for a PFAS treatment system. The gym and state agreed to an administrative consent order that says the business will test that the system works, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Rebecca Casinghino, an owner of the gym, declined to comment.
Private business’s water systems aren’t under the purview of the town water department, said Craig Jalbert, Monson’s water superintendent, but the gym’s results raise an alarm for him. “Why they have a high level, there is always cause for concern. What was there before? ... I’m not sure,” he said. “You always want to know why.”
The town’s water system has not tested high for PFAS, but Jalbert is well aware of the national problem. “It’s not like iron or magnesium or contaminants that are naturally occurring. … It’s manufactured by man. It’s completely man’s fault.”
A state map of PFAS detections in public water systems has dots all over the commonwealth.
Right next door to the crossfit gym, a restaurant over the town line in Palmer had high levels of PFAS in its last test in 2021, according to state data.
In Holland, a restaurant tested three times the allowable limit at its most recent test of PFAS6 in 2022. Well water at Cindy’s Drive-in in Granby had PFAS levels testing consistently higher than the allowable levels in 2021. The seasonal stand does not need to continue testing or take any corrective action because it’s a transient system, the state determined in an analysis. “The levels of PFAS6 did not pose an unacceptable health risk,” the DEP said in a statement on its assessment. The system has an osmosis system to address PFAS, according to Bob Flagg, its water operator.
Flagg, president of East National Water, oversees private business water systems that the state deems public and regulates. Based in Palmer, his business tests 150 systems in the state. Testing is expensive and can cost small systems thousands of dollars a year, he said.
The EPA is considering PFAS limits of 4 parts per trillion for PFOS and PFOA, two PFAS chemicals. “If fully implemented, the rule will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious PFAS-attributable illnesses,” the agency says on its website.
If those stricter federal limits go into effect, Flagg says a lot of his clients’ systems will fail. “Now we’re talking carbon filtration and big, big money,” he said.
The Brewery at Four Star Farms in Northfield faced that problem.
About seven years ago, before building the brewery, the owners tested the groundwater and drilled for a well on the property, said Nathan L’Etoile, the brewery’s president. They knew it would be a public water system under state rules.
After the owners invested in the building and were preparing to open, L’Etoile said the state asked them to test for another set of contaminants, PFAS. The state DEP didn’t require annual testing for PFAS until 2019, the department’s website says.
PFAS were found in the water. “Low and behold this appears in the tests. It was pretty traumatic for us,” L’Etoile said. “We thought we were good to go. This came up at the very end.”
They installed a filtration system on the public water system well, and on two additional wells that the state does not consider public, but serve people like farm employees, L’Etoile said. Each one cost between $25,000 and $30,000. The systems were installed before the brewery opened, so its drinking water has always been clean.
Before it’s treated, the water’s PFAS6 levels have tested as high as 50 times the state limit — the highest of any levels in the state’s drinking water portal, according to the state’s drinking water database.
After treatment, the brewery’s water is not detecting any PFAS6 contaminants, according to state data. What is causing the contamination is not confirmed, according to the state DEP. L’Etoile said he doesn’t know the source. “That’s frustrating,” he said.
Last year, the business got a $38,000 grant from the state to reimburse it for the treatment system installed on the public system. It was not reimbursed for the other two systems.
“It’s expensive, but we have clean and safe water,” L’Etoile said. “We want to make sure folks are not worried about the quality of the product.”
Schools in the Valley have had to remediate PFAS in their water, too.
Northfield Mount Hermon, a private school in Gill, installed two new wells in 2022 after the school’s water tested above the state limit for PFAS, according to the DEP. The Swift River School in New Salem was providing bottled water to students until a new filter was recently installed to address elevated PFAS levels, according to the Greenfield Recorder.
How many private wells have been affected?
“Forever chemicals” also contaminate private water supplies in the Valley. In Leverett, for example, the state installed remediation systems at eight homes.
More than 500,000 people rely on private well water in Massachusetts. This means they are responsible for the testing of contaminants like PFAS, which can be costly.
Working with the state DEP, David A. Reckhow, a University of Massachusetts Amherst engineering professor, helped lead a team that sampled 1,660 private wells across the state and 1,100 public water systems. The team published its results in a December 2023 report that details findings of the $11 million project.
To participate in free well testing, residents had to live in towns where 60% or more homes used private wells. The research found PFAS in private wells in all regions of the state, mostly at levels well below the state limit. But 6% of those tested had PFAS levels in their untreated well water above the level the state considers safe. In the Valley, that includes wells in Granby, Holland, Shutesbury and Westhampton. The state contacted homeowners with high levels with information about treatment options and maintenance.
In looking at public water systems, the analysis determined that 12% of the “raw” water, which has not undergone treatment, had PFAS levels higher than the state limit.
Reckhow’s conclusion from the PFAS research: “You can find it almost anywhere,” he said. This is in part because it is everywhere and in part because the state lowered its allowable levels, Reckhow said.
The Valley generally had lower PFAS levels and fewer hotspots compared to problem areas like northeast of Worcester, Reckhow said.
This study allowed free testing for private well owners. As of today, there are no state funding programs for well owners to test for PFAS, according to the DEP.
In his research, Reckhow is working on alternative ways to treat water for PFAS while managing the Water and Energy Testing (WET) Center at UMass.
Reckhow said that while existing processes like granulated activated carbon, ion exchange, and reverse osmosis are effective treatments to clean drinking water, the PFAS compounds still need to be disposed of after they are filtered out.
“You’re transferring the problem from drinking water to a landfill issue,” he said. “Certainly that’s a short-term, gap solution to what I hope is the more long-term solution of simply destroying the compounds.”
Reckhow is looking at treatments that would break down PFAS in water into simpler compounds that are not harmful to humans. While this technology is used in industrial cases, he said, it needs more time and research to be applied to municipal drinking water.
How the state is taking action on PFAS
State legislators are pushing for solutions to this insidious problem.
Lawmakers created the PFAS Interagency Taskforce in 2020 as a bipartisan committee to investigate PFAS across the commonwealth. The committee was made up of 19 members including senators, scientists, doctors, community members and environmental specialists. It released a report with recommendations in 2022.
State Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, previously served as Senate Chair for the Joint Committee on Public Health, and the role piqued her interest in rallying against the chemicals.
“I absolutely believe and know that we must eliminate all PFAS from every possible consumer product,” Comerford said. “There are almost no cases where there is no other product, other than PFAS-related compounds, that will do the trick. … I think that’s really important for everybody to understand. It’s not a wild idea.”
She’s filed a number of bills to regulate PFAS. Comerford’s Limit Toxic PFAS Chemicals in our Homes bill did not pass, but she has been working on a similar bill, presented by state Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Barnstable, that she hopes will become law by the end of this session.
Comerford filed the bill An Act Protecting Our Soil and Farms from PFAS Contamination, which would provide assistance to farmers who have incurred losses due to PFAS-related damages. This bill was redrafted and approved early this year by the Agriculture Committee that Comerford co-chairs. She also filed a bill that would ban the spraying of mosquito pesticides containing PFAS.
State Sen. John Velis, D-Westfield, is also pushing for stricter limits on PFAS.
“Our water supply is a critical focus, but a big push at the state level has also been on researching the prevalence of PFAS in our overall environment and food supply generally,” Velis said in an email.
Last year, Velis presented An Act Studying the Effect of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in Commercial Products, which would restrict the use of PFAS in many commonly marketed products. It is pending.
Among the various bills, one goal is shared — stopping the influx of PFAS into Massachusetts.
“First of all we have to stop the tap,” Comerford said. “We’ve got to stop it from coming into the commonwealth and we can. We just have to have the social and political will to do it.”
©2024 Advance Local Media LLC.
Visit masslive.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
