Air Force Civil Engineer Center releases site inspection fieldwork findings

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Tiffany Lundberg
  • 21st Space Wing Public Affairs
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – --  Members from the Air Force Civil Engineer Center and 21st Space Wing leadership held a media roundtable and open house at Janitell Junior High School, July 25, 2017, at Fountain, Colorado.

AFCEC released the site inspection report on suspected perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) releases earlier that day. The site inspection report is part of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act process.

Following the release, three members of AFCEC, Col. Todd Moore, 21st Space Wing commander, and Lt. Col. Landon Phillips, 21st Civic Engineer Squadron, met with the Colorado Springs community to personally answer questions through various forums.

The leaders held a closed-door meeting with county commissioners, City of Fountain leaders, U.S. House of Representative Doug Lamborn staffers, U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner staffers, public health representatives and other key stakeholders for a candid question and answer session. The closed door meeting was followed by a media roundtable and an open house for the community.

Moore, who took command of the 21st SW on July 11, led the media roundtable on what the Air Force and Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, have done since the Environmental Protection Agency established lifetime health advisory levels for PFOS/PFOA in drinking water to 70 parts per trillion.

“This is my community now, and as a resident of El Paso County, my team and I take environmental concerns very seriously,” said Moore. “We have nearly 11,000 Team Pete employees who live here — enlisted, officers, civilians and contractors, some of whom live in affected areas."

The fieldwork for the site inspection was completed in November 2016. The fieldwork included testing at 23 groundwater samples, 33 surface and/or subsurface soil samples, two sediment samples and two surface water samples. The report concluded that activities at Peterson AFB have impacted the environment at the areas tested.

“One of the things we have learned in our study at Peterson Air Force Base is that we have a less than perfect understanding about how ground water moves at the installation,” said Cornell Long, AFCEC team lead. “So what we need to do is go out and investigate further (into) these paleo channels to understand, because we don’t have a good understanding, how contamination that might occur in groundwater on base actually moves and how it might impact drinking water off the installation.”

The next step in the Air Force's response to suspected PFOS/PFOA contamination is to delineate the source and scope of the contamination. This step received funding from the Secretariat office of Financial Management last week.

Additionally, Moore briefed six actions the Air Force and Peterson AFB has taken to reduce PFOS and PFOA from entering the environment. The actions include the replacement of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) in emergency response vehicles, treating accidental releases of AFFF as releases of hazardous material, preventing inadvertent releases to the sanitary sewer, and providing $4.3 million dollars of contract authority for the provision of alternate drinking water.

For more information on site inspection report, visit the Public Notices page on the Peterson AFB website. For more information on PFOS and PFOA visit the AFCEC website.

 

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