Agency requests $1.2 million to study plume of toxic chemicals
Carcinogenic substances known as PFAS are seeping into aquifers from Holloman, Cannon Air Force bases
New Mexico’s Environment Department is asking state lawmakers for $1.2 million to study a plume of toxic chemicals seeping from Holloman and Cannon Air Force bases.
For years, the Air Force had used a firefighting foam in routine training that puts out burning jet fuel but contains chemicals now known to harm human health. The foam has since leached off bases into nearby underground water, and now a plume of carcinogenic substances, abbreviated as PFAS, is moving at an unknown speed in Southern and Eastern New Mexico.
“The plume itself is largely unknown at this point,” Environment Secretary James Kenney said in an interview with The New Mexican.
Kenney called that unknown “disturbing,” especially because “we know who caused it, and they’re unwilling to take responsibility for it even to identify where it is and isn’t. And therefore the state is having to take that on now.”
PFAS are a class of 5,000 chemicals known to increase the risk of cancer, impair childhood development, affect fertility and the immune system and increase cholesterol levels, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. They are found in everything from firefighting foam to fast food wrappers, clothing, cosmetics, upholstery and nonstick cookware.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas sued the Air Force in March after groundwater sampling showed levels hundreds of times higher than a federal health advisory limit in some areas.
The lawsuit asks the Air Force to pay for studying and cleaning up the contamination. The Air Force has requested the case be dismissed.
Meanwhile, the chemical plume could endanger dairy farms depending on where and how quickly they are spreading, said Kenney and a dairy farmers association that
has joined the chorus of groups calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt an enforceable federal health standard for PFAS.
“Based on what we know right now, that plume is moving southeast. But we don’t know how fast,” said Walter Bradley, director of government and industry relations in the Southwest area for Dairy Farmers of America.
Bradley, who also served as lieutenant governor under former Gov. Gary Johnson, said businesses, homes, dairies and city water could all be in jeopardy until “we know exactly how wide it is … and how fast is it moving downstream from that channel area.”
Kenney said the $1.2 million he’s asking for to investigate the plume is “a critical first step” in knowing how to contain and eventually clean it up.
Kenney said the department would hire a private contractor to study the pollution if the Legislature approves the special funding request.
PFAS pollution caused Clovis dairy farmer Art Schaap to dump thousands of gallons of milk and mull whether he needed to kill off his 4,000 dairy cattle.
Environment and agriculture officials in New Mexico say Schaap’s farm is the only one they’ve found drawing from groundwater with chemical levels above a federal health advisory limit of
70 parts per trillion. One part per trillion is equivalent to a drop in an Olympicsize swimming pool.
Testing results of nearby public water supplies in Clovis and Alamogordo did not find detectable PFAS levels, according to documents provided by the Environment Department.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sent a letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in August accusing the federal regulatory agency of failing “to uphold compliance with federal environmental laws.”
Environmental groups praised the state for beginning to take action ahead of the Air Force and EPA.
“It’s encouraging to see the agency asking for the funds it needs to track these issues,” said Camilla Feibelman, director of the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club. “Of course we always want to see things happening faster … but we also have to recognize that this administration has been at the helm for 11 months.”
Sanders Moore, the former longtime director of Environment New Mexico, said, “We should know what’s going on, and then we should be taking action. It’s a known toxin, and we don’t want any toxin in our water.”