Cross-Country Tour Highlights America’s Most Contaminated Military Bases

A still photo from one of the videos that Pat Elder made on his “Million Parts per Trillion Tour”; all the videos can be found at civilianexposure.org. China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, located 150 miles north of Los Angeles, was Stop #1.

By Pat Elder
WILPF US Member

“If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.”   
    ― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

From February 23 to March 1, I drove across the country with my daughter Holly in a week to draw attention to the reckless behavior of the military as it continues to poison the waters of America.
 
We billed our trip “The Million Parts per Trillion Tour” because we stopped at eight extremely contaminated bases, all with more than a million parts per trillion (ppt) of deadly Per and Poly Fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the groundwater.
 
We worked with WILPF US and Civilian Exposure from Camp Lejeune, NC.
 
PFAS is found in the aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) the military uses to extinguish massive fires during routine training exercises on their bases. These highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals are allowed to leach into ground and sewer. PFAS is also found in Teflon and other products, and is known as the “forever chemical” because it never degrades in the environment; it is the poison that poisons forever.

The former England Air Force Base in Alexandria, Louisiana, was the most severely contaminated place we visited, with 10,970,000 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFAS in the groundwater. We saw impoverished communities served by well water near that base. View a YouTube video about this visit here.

The press is silent, and people don’t know they’re being poisoned. Not a single soul we spoke to during our tour knew of the issue. Just two of 200 (mainstream, for-profit) news agencies we contacted reached out to us, although they never ran a story.
 
The most minute traces of PFAS adversely affect women’s reproductive health and cause a variety of cancers. More than a third of all Americans may have PFAS-contaminated drinking water. A Harvard public health scientist says exposure of 1 ppt of PFAS is detrimental to human health.
 
Even so, the military is claiming it is free to continue using the foams and poisoning American communities, because, they say, the chemicals are not regulated by the EPA or the Department of Agriculture so it’s OK to use them. Generally, the Department of Defense (DOD) refuses to pay for cleaning up the contamination or to provide alternative drinking systems, aside from a few instances where they’ve provided bottled water to unfortunate households.
 
Furthermore, the military claims that individual states lack the “jurisdictional authority” to force the military to comply with state environmental laws. The Department of Defense claims “sovereign immunity” from state environmental regulations.
 
The military’s potential financial liability is astronomical, and this partially explains the EPA’s steadfast refusal to institute a Minimum Contaminant Level (MCL) regulation for the substances. Doing so would unleash a flood of litigation against the military here and around the world. In Germany, for example, where the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Germany protects the US military from liability, a German town is now suing their government for health impacts.
 
Curiously, our trip has led us to focus on what we don’t know. The DOD has been testing thousands of individual wells, but in many communities they’re not publishing the results. We don’t know how far the wells they tested were located from the routine discharges of PFAS on base. We don’t know how far the deadly plumes have traveled from bases. We don’t know how deep the private wells were. We don’t know how deep the military’s wells were. We don’t know how precise their measurements were. Experts tell us the military is performing tests that are designed to miss small, yet potentially harmful, amounts of the contaminants.

We are witnessing a nightmare scenario in which state and federal regulatory agencies are at a standstill, while the military, which continues to use these chemicals, is the lead agency in charge of documenting the extent of this contamination and protecting human health.

The age of assuming the water is safe to drink in America is over. Don’t drink well water or municipal water until you’re satisfied it is not contaminated with PFAS.

You may read summaries of each base we visited, including links to the brief videos we made at each site here. Articles I’ve written about the military’s impact on the environment and public health are posted at my new website: www.militarypoisons.org.

Articles I’ve written include:

• “An Empire of Bases Poisons Water, Threatening Our Own Collapse”
• “The Military is Poisoning America’s Groundwater – A Photo Essay”
• “The Military covers up the extent of PFAS contamination across the country while it continues to poison hundreds of communities”
• “The U.S. Military is Poisoning Germany”
• "How War Pollutes the Potomac River"

Tara Copp has a number of articles at Military Times.

Nancy Price of WILPF’s Earth Democracy Committee has been sharing videos and reports from the tour, and wants WILPF members to know the following:

“It's time to rise up against the alarming contamination by the military of our drinking water that is tragically affecting the health of on-base personnel and residents in neighboring communities. Pat's account of his ‘Million Parts per Trillion Tour’ is just one part of the story. Earth Democracy looks forward to working with Pat in the future.”