[CPEO-MEF] PFAS: New Mexico

[Lenny Siegel]

Toxic Threat
The military polluted New Mexico waters and soils with PFAS and is fighting against cleanup of the “forever problem”

By Laura Paskus| 
Santa Fe Reporter (NM)
August 3, 2021

In the early to mid-1990s, Air Force firefighter Kevin Ferrara was stationed at Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico. It was his first deployment after training at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois.

The life of an Air Force firefighter is similar to a municipal firefighter, he says. They ignite jet fuel in training pits and extinguish the fires. Sometimes, an airplane crashes. And every day, firefighters check their equipment, testing trucks and spraying foam, making sure no gremlins gum things up in an emergency.

“There were some incidents where we sprayed foam out for fire prevention visits, and young kids played in it because they thought it was cool, it looked like snow,” he says. Now retired, Ferrara says he unquestioningly believed leadership—during his training and deployments—when they compared that firefighting foam to “soap and water.”

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2021/08/03/toxic-threat/

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel at cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)