Colorado should set a limit for the allowable concentration of unhealthy chemicals in drinking water.

Colorado health officials should take the contamination crisis in El Paso County into their own hands and set a limit for the allowable concentration of unhealthy chemicals found in drinking water.

Certainly the U.S. Air Force has responded quickly to findings in 2016 that the military air base east of Colorado Springs had contaminated ground water with harmful perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs, through a flame retardant used to fight fires at the airport.

PFCs are used in a number of consumer products and have been linked by scientists to problems like low birth weights, and kidney and testicular cancers. The chemicals are thought to endanger pregnant women, infants and children the most.

The Department of Defense committed to spend $2 billion across the nation on testing and cleanup of PFCs. Thousands of residents who relied on water contaminated by the plume in El Paso County are receiving relief in the form of filtered water from the aquifer, water piped from an alternative source, or bottled water.

But much more needs to be done.

The Denver Post’s Bruce Finley has done an excellent job tracking this contamination crisis and his reports offer a troubling tale of gaps in the system to ensure safe drinking water to more than 80,000 people living downstream from the contamination plume.

For example, testing of the plume and levels of PFCs in drinking water south of the base has stopped. The state has emptied its budget for testing and the Environmental Protection Agency has not provided additional funds. The results make it difficult to track the plume’s progress toward other communities, including Pueblo.

And while the Air Force has continued testing around Peterson Air Force Base, Finley reported no testing is being done further afield in the Fountain Creek watershed where nearly 80,000 people live between Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

Also, Finley reported this summer that researchers from the Colorado School of Mines found that carbon filters, like those being used by one of the public water systems in the contaminated area, fail to fully remove all the harmful chemicals.

Much more is needed to be done on this issue and the state should step in to fill the gap and compel more action from the EPA and DOD.

Finley reported last week that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is considering setting a legal limit for the maximum amount of PFCs.

As CDPHE environmental toxicologist Kristy Richardson noted: “We need to be able to have not just a carrot, but a stick.”

The proposed limit is 70 parts per trillion PFCs in groundwater, which is in line with a health advisory level set by the Environmental Protection Agency. At Peterson, the groundwater contamination has been measured as high as 88,000 parts per trillion. The median level of contamination in groundwater around Security, Widefield, Fountain, Stratmoor Hills and Garden Valley has been measured at 120 parts per trillion.

Finley reported the Colorado School of Mines detected PFCs at 11,000 parts per trillion and 33,000 parts per trillion in an undisclosed water supply near the base.

We hope the state takes Richardson’s advice and sets a limit that will help them with both the El Paso County contamination and any PFC problem areas that could be found in the future. The members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are William Dean Singleton, chairman; Mac Tully, CEO and publisher; Chuck Plunkett, editor of the editorial pages; Megan Schrader, editorial writer; and Cohen Peart, opinion editor.