'A hodgepodge': Draft PFAS assessment plan for Barnstable fire academy plume is inadequate

Jeannette Hinkle Cape Cod Times 

Published Aug 30, 2021

The now-shuttered Barnstable County Fire and Rescue Training Academy is one of the most PFAS-polluted sites in the state, if not the country, according to hydrogeologist Tom Cambareri.

In 2016, Cambareri says, the maximum, average and median concentrations of one PFAS compound in groundwater there were 320,000, 10,126 and 930 nanograms per liter, respectively. The state standard is 20.

Cleanup,  including removing tons of contaminated soil, has helped, but recent samples revealed the contaminants remain sky-high, up to roughly 10,000 nanograms per liter in some cases, Cambareri said.

More: Barnstable County OKs nearly $1M to cap PFAS-polluted site, demolish buildings

Cambareri, a water resources specialist, began managing assessment and cleanup of contamination on the property in the 1980s, first as a consultant and then with the Cape Cod Commission.

'Just about every new contamination that's been found has been found on this site.'

Over the years, he assessed the damage done to the area — a stone’s throw from Hyannis’ public drinking water supply — by petroleum hydrocarbons, then MTBE, then perchlorate.

“This has been an incredible site,” Cambareri said. “Just about every new contamination that's been found has been found on this site. Each time, the only way we could deal with it was to hit it hard, do the assessment and do the remediation.”

Today, the problem at the fire training academy is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a group of man-made chemicals used in firefighting foams sprayed on the county-owned property during training sessions. The chemicals are linked to health problems including cancer, thyroid hormone disruption and immune system issues.

Cape watersheds: Study uncovers previously unknown PFAS contaminants

And Cambareri, who is now working as a hydrogeologic consultant for the town of Barnstable, says the county isn’t hitting the problem there hard enough.

In a letter to Barnstable Department of Public Works Director Dan Santos, forwarded to county officials, Cambareri laid out what he sees as deficiencies in the county consultant’s draft scope of work for a comprehensive site assessment of PFAS contamination at the fire training academy.

The deficiencies are so great, Cambareri argues, that he recommends scrapping the entire document and beginning anew, with an independent consultant.

He calls the current plan, prepared by engineering consultant BETA Group, “a hodgepodge of incremental tasks that diverts resources from assessing the full extent of contamination.”

“The County should withdraw the (BETA comprehensive site assessment draft) scope and revise it with clear objectives developed by an independent team,” Cambareri wrote. “The (comprehensive site assessment) scope should be recast as a full assessment of the PFAS impacts on downgradient groundwater and resources.”

“Nowhere else have 11 public water supply wells been impacted by PFAS in the Commonwealth, not even Joint Base Cape Cod,” he added. “It is time for the County and (the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection) to engage experts to broaden the knowledge base to solve this community problem in a pragmatic manner.”

County Administrator Beth Albert, who was hired in the spring, said the county will review Cambareri’s comments.

“We are asking for just this kind of feedback,” she said Thursday. “That's why we did this. It's a very open process and I really appreciate Tom's comments, because he's very knowledgeable about this site. I think we can all agree that we need to get more information, which is exactly what we're trying to do.”

What are Barnstable’s problems with the county’s PFAS plan?

Cambareri laid out a litany of problems with the county’s draft scope of work for the fire academy site assessment, but his biggest concern is that the proposed plan won’t add much to the public’s understanding about the spread of the PFAS plume from the fire training academy over the course of the past few decades.

The proposed monitoring wells are mostly located within the known area of impact, Cambareri says.

“When you're trying to expand the area of understanding, you need to start placing wells more on the perimeters of where you already know the contamination is and then use groundwater flow to project where the contaminants will go,” he said.

It’s a criticism Santos agrees with.

“We concur that the proposed plan is inadequate, given the serious nature of the contamination,” Santos said. “Primarily, the county plan does not go far enough in helping the town of Barnstable, the town of Yarmouth and the Mid-Cape region as a whole to understand the extent of the contamination there. We've been asking for this for the last three or four years.”

An adequate response to Barnstable’s concerns, Santos said, would be going back to square one to design a comprehensive investigative program that thoroughly maps the plume’s progress from the fire training academy.

Cambareri thinks monitoring should extend further downgradient, from Mary Dunn Pond through the airport — which has contributed its own PFAS to the area’s contamination problem — and then through the Maher wellfield to Mill Creek in Yarmouth, where current data on PFAS contamination is lacking.

Cambareri questions why the county, through BETA, would recommend spending time and money placing new monitoring wells upgradient of the fire training academy.

“It’s like putting a marble on a ramp and expecting the marble to roll uphill,” Cambareri said. “I'm not downplaying the contamination of the fire district wells that are to the west. But I think there are other sources of that.”

Santos said some upgradient monitoring is a normal part of any contamination investigation, but he stressed any upgradient monitoring should be paired with more comprehensive downgradient monitoring that he thinks is lacking in the county’s draft plan.

“The only reason you would look upgradient is if you believed you weren't the source of the contamination, and that's just not plausible here given what we know about the site,” Santos said. “As a responsible party under the Massachusetts DEP contingency plan, if there are other responsible parties, they want to identify them, of course, and share liability if they can.”

Roger Thibault, the licensed site professional in charge of the site assessment for BETA Group, said at a recent public hearing about the site assessment’s draft scope of work that inclusion of upgradient monitoring in the Barnstable Fire District stemmed from a request that BETA investigate contamination there.

“The reason there are wells on the west side of the pond is because we have assertions from the Barnstable Fire District that there is migration upgradient,” Thibault said. “I just want to note that that's just not out of the blue.”

Cambareri said that if the county amended its monitoring plan on behalf of the fire district, it should also amend its monitoring plan on behalf of the town of Barnstable, and members of the public.

County not 'doing the job it needs to do'

At the public hearing of the draft scope of work for the site assessment, Greater Hyannis Civic Association President Betsy Young said her group is worried the county is not “doing the job it needs to do.”

“The community is very concerned about this contamination, which affects all of our wells,” Young said. “We believe the scope needs to be widened to include the entire area so we can understand the extent of the exposure and not be limited to the area around the site.”

In addition to requesting the DEP create a team focused on PFAS contamination in Hyannis that would include town and county representatives as well as members of the public, Young called for the agency to expand the public involvement process governing the fire academy project, and access to records showing project costs.

The town of Barnstable has already spent upwards of $20 million to deal with the effects of PFAS pollution from the fire academy, and because of ongoing treatment of wells near the property, the water in Hyannis is safe to drink. 

Albert said the county is currently working to compile a list of its appropriations and expenditures for the fire training academy PFAS assessment and cleanup. 

PFAS cleanup costs: Cape towns look to Congress to help pay

“We want to make sure that that information is transparent and available to the public,” Albert said. “As the new county administrator, I feel really very supportive of that and we are working internally to get that information together and get it out to the public.”

Young, Cambareri and others have argued the county should use some of the roughly $40 million in COVID-19 relief money it received from the federal government through the American Rescue Plan Act, as well as other revenue, to expand its investigation into the PFAS plume emanating from the fire training academy.

“There are substantial sums available and I believe that they should be designated for expansion of the types of testing that's being done,” said Sue Phelan, one of the residents who petitioned for the project to include public involvement.

As written, Cambareri doesn’t think the draft scope of work complies with Massachusetts regulations requiring the county to evaluate the full vertical and horizontal effect of PFAS contamination coming from the fire academy. And he thinks a different group, an inclusive one independent of county control, should be tasked with the job.

“We know how to do this. It just takes resources and the right people to do it,” he said.

DEP Public Affairs Director Edmund Coletta said that, under the public involvement process, the county is now charged with responding to comments about the draft scope of work proposed by BETA Group, and making changes based on those comments.

"It's really up to them to take the public input and make changes as they see necessary and issue a final scope of work," Coletta said, adding DEP would give its input informally along the way. "Should we determine once the final scope comes out that it is inadequate in any way, there is a possibility of a comprehensive audit that we could conduct that could require them to make changes, but we're not at that point."