More wells are tainted

Sixteen groundwater wells around the border of Fairchild Air Force Base have tested above Environmental Protection Agency lifetime health advisory levels for Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and/or Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) contamination.

In April, engineers contracted by the U.S. Air Force found five non-drinking groundwater wells on the base that tested above advisory levels for contamination. Fairchild’s public drinking water system was sampled and all results were “non-detect” or below EPA’s health advisory levels.

Engineers collected samples from 23 private wells around Fairchild.

On April 28, Fairchild officials contacted residents living near the base to notify them that their water wells were contaminated. Beatrice Count was one of the property owners whose well tested positive for contaminants.

“In three years, I drank a lifetime of contaminants,” she said.

One well tested below advisory levels and engineers will continue to monitor it. Five wells tested positive for contaminants, but did not have any detectable advisory levels.

Two wells were inactive and the results for another are still pending, but are expected within the next one to two business days. Fairchild officials will notify the property owner when they receive the results.

Residents whose wells tested above the advisory levels were given the option to receive bottled drinking water from the Air Force until a long-term solution is found to provide them with a clean source of potable water.

In an April 20 Cheney Free Press article, Marc Connally, Fairchild’s Air Force Civil Engineer Center on-site remedial project manager, said the long-term solution will most likely be a filter system as “the chemical can be removed by the filtration process.”

PFAS/PFOAs are classified by the EPA as “emerging contaminants” and are found in household items, as well as heat and fire-resistant products including an aqueous film forming foam, which was used by the Air Force for firefighting training purposes from 1970 to 2016.

The EPA issued updated PFOS/PFOA lifetime health advisory levels in May 2016. According to the EPA’s website, “at high concentrations, certain PFAS have been linked to adverse health effects in laboratory animals that may reflect associations between exposure to these chemicals and some health problems such as low birth weight, delayed puberty onset, elevated cholesterol levels, and reduced immunologic responses to vaccination.”

The Civil Engineer Center has been conducting proactive and comprehensive assessments at a variety of active and closed bases to determine if PFOS and PFOA pose a risk to drinking water and Fairchild was identified as one of the sampling sites where the foam was used for fire training, equipment testing and emergency response incidents.

As for municipal wells, Airway Heights Public Director Kevin Anderson said his staff conducts testing required by the EPA and state and the city’s wells have never had a hit from anything coming out of Fairchild.

“We’ve never had a hit on any chemical that I’m aware of, there might have been something in the distant past,” Anderson said. “From everything I’ve heard, no volatile organic compounds or inorganic matter and we’re hoping to keep it that way.”

Medical Lake City Administrator Doug Ross said his staff sampled two of the city’s wells as a precautionary matter and he should receive results in about three weeks.

Al Stover can be reached at [email protected].