Carper: USAF Diverted $66 Million Away from Other Projects to Address PFAS Contamination

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), reiterated his call for Congress to pass legislation that would address Per- and Polyflouroalkyl Substances (PFAS) contamination after being informed by the Department of Defense (DOD) that the U.S. Air Force has needed to divert more than $66 million from several projects across the country to instead go toward investigation and mitigation efforts related to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanic acid (PFOA) contamination.

According to DOD, the Air Force has diverted $66,604,206 away from 26 projects—including more than $37 million diverted from a landfill cap repair and soil investigation and remediation project in Alaska, $8.6 million from a radiological cleanup in Texas, and almost $1.5 million from a munitions response investigation and soil removal project that included asbestos abatement in Illinois.

The letter from DOD released by Senator Carper today comes in response to the letter sent to DOD, led by Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.), along with Senator Carper, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Ranking Member Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.). The letter requested a list of all diversions, or planned diversions, of funds intended for a site cleanup of non-PFAS contamination to PFAS clean-up efforts.

“Congress needs to ensure that the Department of Defense has the resources needed to fully address its millions of dollars—perhaps billions of dollars—in liabilities related to the DOD-related PFAS contamination in our communities. Otherwise, the DOD will just keep robbing Peter to pay Paul by putting important projects on standby and stretching budgets to clean up PFAS contamination,” Senator Carper said. “We also need to understand that this problem is not just a money matter.”

“There are a number of ways that Congress must begin tackling this multi-faceted problem,” Senator Carper continued. “For starters, Congress should declare PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law. That would greatly reduce the slow bureaucracy that so often prolongs the process for cleaning up contaminated sites, which just creates more anxiety for communities concerned about known or potential contamination.”

In March, Senators Carper, Reed, Peters and Murray sent four letters to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Defense (DOD), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requesting all documents and communications between the agencies related to the interagency review of EPA’s February 2019 “PFAS Action Plan” and EPA’s long-awaited groundwater cleanup guidelines for PFAS.

You may read the letter from the Department of Defense HERE.