{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://houlahan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3700", "Maryland military facilities investigating groundwater for \u2018forever chemicals\u2019", "2023-12-11", "2023", "2023-12", "Democrat", "House", "PA", "Chrissy Houlahan", "H001085", "houlahan.house.gov", "houlahan", "https://houlahan.house.gov/press/documentquery.aspx", "page_html", "Originally published in The Daily Record\n\nMaryland military facilities are in the early stages of remedial investigations into \u201cforever chemicals\u201d that jeopardize drinking water supplies in groundwater after a September report by the Department of Defense identified hundreds of military sites across the country as at risk for such chemicals.\n\nThe facilities include high-profile Joint Base Andrews, home to Air Force One, as well as Aberdeen Proving Ground, Fort Meade, Fort Detrick, Patuxent River Naval Air Station, and the Naval Research Laboratory-Chesapeake Bay Detachment in Calvert County.\n\nThe potential contamination involves chemicals known as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are a family of thousands of chemicals used in firefighting foams, heat-resistant products, and many other items.\n\nThe Pentagon has been under fire for years from communities, environmental organizations, and Congress for failing to recognize the dangers of hazardous chemicals used in military operations and for being slow to clean up facilities.\n\nThe DOD has initiated remedial investigations at 275 Defense Department and National Guard sites for potential PFAS contamination, 245 of which, including 11 locations at 10 Maryland sites, are close to groundwater aquifers.\n\nSome of these sites are part of aquifers that serve as primary or secondary drinking water sources.\n\nRobin Broder, deputy director of Waterkeepers Chesapeake, said PFAS is a known issue around military bases and is more likely to become a human health issue by contaminating water and crops.\n\nMilitary bases often use firefighting foam in emergencies and training exercises. Foam that still contains PFAS can seep into soil, evaporate into the air or run off into waterways.\n\nPFAS run-off can also contaminate fish and harm people who eat the contaminated seafood.\n\nIn 2021, the Maryland Department of the Environment found elevated concentrations of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, a chemical in the PFAS family, in redbreast sunfish, yellow bullhead catfish, and largemouth bass in Piscataway Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River.\n\n\u201cCleanup efforts are challenging and costly,\u201d said Dr. Arthur Daniel Jones III, a professor in Michigan State University\u2019s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and associate director of the MSU Center for PFAS Research.\n\nSuch chemicals are difficult to remove from the environment after contamination and have very few natural processes to break them down, he said.\n\n\u201cPart of the challenge is that \u2026 we certainly don\u2019t know very much about how the mixtures of PFAS \u2026 are toxic,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThere are PFAS in foods, household products. \u2026 Almost every person on the planet is already contaminated by PFAS.\u201d\n\nExposure or consumption of PFAS has other potential health risks, including fertility and immune system issues, developmental delays in children, increased cancer risks, and hormone interference.\n\nThe Aberdeen Proving Ground, an Army facility, states on its website that tests of its drinking water showed PFAS contaminants below the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s advisory level of 70 parts per trillion.\n\n\u201cThe Army is committed to ensuring quality drinking water is provided to its soldiers, family members, and civilians,\u201d the website says. \u201cWe continue to work with our state and federal partners and will ensure the community is kept updated on the status of our investigation.\u201d\n\nThe Army site is in the planning stages of the remedial investigation, said Quentin Johnson, Aberdeen\u2019s director of public affairs.\n\nSimilarly, Joint Base Andrews emphasized that its drinking water, which comes from the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, is unaffected by PFAS.\n\nAccording to a statement by the Air Force Civil Engineer Center at the Joint Base Andrews Field Office, the extent of PFAS impacts on groundwater at the site is unknown, but groundwater samples have indicated the presence of these chemicals. Further samples are being collected to determine the degree of contamination.\n\n\u201cThis is a slow process complicated by the fact that we are sampling at an active airfield on an active military installation with active missions critical to national security,\u201d said the statement said. \u201cAt JBA, it takes months to collect samples and get back results.\u201d\n\nThe Air Force, however, has removed all fire suppression systems that contained PFAS chemicals from the base, according to the statement.\n\nJoint Base Andrews said it has informed local communities, health departments, and government bodies about the PFAS issue.\n\nTwo sites at the Naval Research Laboratory \u2013 Chesapeake Bay Detachment will be investigated by the Navy\u2019s Environmental Restoration Program for PFAS: a fire testing area and a former firehouse, according to a statement from the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Atlantic.\n\nThe fire testing area is already under investigation, and the firehouse will be studied in 2024 to \u201cinvestigate the nature and extent of the PFAS and assess potential human health and ecological risks,\u201d the statement said.\n\nIn 2018, the Navy\u2019s off-base water sampling in communities near the Chesapeake lab revealed no perfluorooctanoic acid, also called PFOA (another chemical in the PFAS family), or PFOS levels above the EPA limit of 70 parts per trillion.\n\n\u201cThe Maryland Department of the Environment and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provide regulatory oversight on the remediation of contamination, whether from PFAS or other contaminants, at military sites within the state,\u201d said Jay Apperson, a representative from the Maryland Department of the Environment.\n\nThe state, EPA, Navy personnel and community members are actively involved in Restoration Advisory Boards, ensuring that families living near these facilities are informed about environmental issues and the steps being taken to address them.\n\nRep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, a member of the Congressional PFAS Task Force, emphasized the urgency of addressing PFAS contamination in a recent statement to Capital News Service.\n\n\u201cI recently joined my colleague Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D) of Pennsylvania and many others in urging the Department of Defense to swiftly address its growing backlog of military sites contaminated with PFAS,\u201d Raskin said. \u201cWe also urged the DoD to adequately fund cleanup efforts at contaminated sites across the country, including the White Oak Naval Surface Warfare Center in my district and several other sites in our state.\u201d\n\nJones said there aren\u2019t many \u201cgood\u201d ways to get rid of PFAS.\n\n\u201cEven if you\u2019re drinking water that has very low levels of PFAS in the water, most of what you drink today is going to be with you for years,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2026 And there are very few natural processes that break down PFAS, so in essence, that\u2019s why they\u2019re called forever chemicals.\u201d\n\nOther Maryland sites where PFAS investigations are underway or planned are the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Carderock Division \u2013 Annapolis Detachment, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division, U.S. Naval Electronic Systems in St. Inigoes in St. Mary\u2019s County and the Martin State Air National Guard Base in Middle River.", 1, "2026-04-08T14:14:11Z", "2026-04-08T14:23:06Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://houlahan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3700"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.650417922064662, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}