[CPEO-MEF] PFCs: "We don't yet know full extent of Wurtsmith Air Base [MI] contamination"

[Lenny Siegel]

DEQ: We don't yet know full extent of Wurtsmith Air Base contamination

by Keith Matheny 
Detroit Free Press (MI)
November 13, 2016


Potentially harmful chemicals spreading in groundwater from the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda exists in a far larger area around the shuttered facility than regulators initially believed — so much so that investigators don't yet know where the contamination stops.

At issue are perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs, a legacy of firefighting foam used extensively at the base in training and fire suppression beginning in the 1970s. The chemicals are so pervasive in the groundwater that, in an area of the base where firefighting training took place for years, "if you pull the water out of the ground in that training area, it still foams, there’s so much in there," said Michigan Department of Environmental Quality specialist Robert Delaney.

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For the entire article, see
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/11/13/deq-we-dont-yet-know-full-extent-wurtsmith-air-base-contamination/93242484/

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel at cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org