NMED pushing Air Force on water

CANNON AIR FORCE BASE — The U.S. Air Force could face thousands in daily fines if it does not quickly comply with state recommendations regarding chemical contamination to groundwater supplies linked to military firefighting activities at Cannon Air Force Base.

A Notice of Violation (NOV) was served Nov. 30 to the Air Force Civil Engineer Center (AFCEC) and announced publicly in a news release from the New Mexico Environment Department late Tuesday morning.

“While NMED understands that the Air Force is addressing PFAS contamination at its installations pursuant to a nationwide program, the Air Force must nonetheless comply with specific requirements of New Mexico law and regulations,” said the NOV letter. That refers to the detection months earlier of potentially carcinogenic Per- and Poly-Fluoroalkyl Substances in private wells southeast of the base.

The letter said the base was “operating in violation of the New Mexico Water Quality Act ... and its correlated Ground and Surface Water Protection Regulations,” failing to meet several requirements NMED conveyed to the Air Force in late September.

Per the NOV, NMED is requiring under promise of civil penalties that the Air Force initiate “mitigating activities,” including “identification and timeline of options to be evaluated as potential short-term corrective measures for affected dairies” and “evaluation of the feasibility of installing one or more treatment systems on contaminated water supply wells.”

A Cannon representative said in Tuesday morning’s Curry County Commission meeting that the base was starting phase one of its response to the situation — speaking with impacted property owners — and that the installation of a water filtration system could potentially take several more months.

A base media spokesman on Tuesday referred questions on the NOV to AFCEC, a representative of which said the Air Force was “reviewing the notice of violation and will respond appropriately.”

The base previously announced sampling of 25 water sites in an “impact area” of four miles southeast of the base, identifying three locations where PFAS levels exceeded an EPA lifetime health advisory for humans.

Bottled water was offered to impacted property owners as a sort of emergency stop-gap, but NMED said that doesn’t go far enough. State officials have demanded the Air Force provide evidence by Jan. 15 that all well owners in the impact area were at least offered to have tests done. And they insisted on a more comprehensive test of the “suite of hundreds of compounds” contained within the PFAS umbrella, not only the two that have been singled out by the EPA.

“...all of the PFAS, and not solely PFOA and PFOS compounds that the Air Force has discharged into groundwater are ‘water contaminants’ under New Mexico law,” said the NOV letter. “Receiving results from only two contaminants, PFOS and PFOA, as the Air Force is now reporting, may unnecessarily hinder the Air Force and NMED understanding and approach to cleanup.”

The NOV is “NMED’s final effort to obtain the Air Force’s voluntary compliance in these matters,” and failure to comply with it “may result in NMED’s issuance of an Administrative Compliance Order that can assess civil penalties for up to $15,000 per day for each violation.”