PFAS contamination: Of 21 Barnstable ponds tested, 21 had contaminants, town report finds

Jeannette Hinkle Cape Cod Times 

Published Oct 4, 2021 

In July 2020, Tom Cambareri dragged his kayak to the shore of Aunt Bettys Pond in Barnstable. He paddled out to the middle and dropped his sampling equipment into the water.  

Cambareri, a hydrologist and the founder of Sole Source Consulting, was on a mission for the town of Barnstable. His goal was to better map the landscape of PFAS contamination in the town’s surface water bodies as the search for new sources of drinking water to meet rising demand intensifies.

The issue:As Barnstable hunts for new sources of public drinking water, PFAS contamination rears its ugly head

Cambareri ultimately collected water samples from 21 water bodies in town, according to a report he produced in December 2020. 

The results from lab tests of those samples showed PFAS compounds were present in every water body tested, with some registering PFAS levels far above the state standard for drinking water. There is no standard for PFAS contamination insurface water bodies, such as ponds and creeks.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of thousands of manmade chemicals linked to health problems ranging from immune system issues to cancer. The chemicals remain essentially unregulated at the federal level, but some states, including Massachusetts, have begun to put safe drinking water limits on a few of the more well-researched compounds.

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In 2020, Massachusetts instituted a drinking water standard of 20 nanograms per liter for a group of six PFAS compounds, which are now known as the PFAS6.

Of the 21 samples Cambareri collected, seven had PFAS6 levels that exceeded the state drinking water standard. The sample taken at Aunt Bettys Pond had one of the highest readings: 141.4 nanograms per liter, roughly seven times the state drinking water standard.

Cambareri tested for 18 other PFAS compounds that haven’t yet been regulated by the state or federal government.

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Three water bodies had total PFAS levels exceeding 200 nanograms per liter, three had levels exceeding 100 nanograms per liter, and five had levels exceeding 20 nanograms per liter.

At Aunt Bettys Pond, total PFAS levels registered at 237.9 nanograms per liter, the second-highest reading after its feeder system, Hyannis Creek, where levels topped 252 nanograms per liter

When Cambareri compared PFAS levels in the surface water bodies he sampled to PFAS levels in Hyannis’s public drinking wells before treatment, he confirmed that contamination in ponds, lakes and creeks was correlated with contamination in village wells.

“… Areas with high concentrations of PFAS contamination in surface water bodies also have similarly high concentrations of contamination in wells,” Cambareri wrote. 

“Because of this relationship we can assume that development of wells in an area with high concentrations of PFAS in surface water would result in high concentrations of PFAS in wells, thus resulting in higher treatment costs,” he added.

Laurel Schaider, a senior scientist at Silent Spring Institute, where she leads the institute’s water quality research on PFAS, reviewed Cambareri’s report at the Times’ request.

“I think this is a really important report,” Schaider said Friday. “It’s a reminder of the interconnectedness of groundwater and surface water on the Cape. Given what we know about the high levels of PFAS reaching the drinking water wells in Hyannis, it’s not surprising that the ponds in those same areas have similar levels of PFAS.”

Cambareri said in his report that, as the town considers new sources of drinking water, it should rule out places where PFAS contamination is known to be present in nearby surface water bodies.

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“By taking account of the behavior of contamination plumes from multiple sources, several future well sites can be ruled out,” Cambareri wrote in his report. “For example, two of the most convenient potential future well sites located within Hyannis, thus requiring the shortest transmission mains, have a high degree of risk because of the presence of multiple PFAS sources.”

Where is the contamination coming from?

The Barnstable County Fire Rescue and Training Academy and the Cape Cod Gateway Airport — two locations where PFAS-laden firefighting foam was applied for decades — are two known sources of significant PFAS contamination in Hyannis. 

The levels of PFAS detected at those sites are staggering. At the fire training academy, tests done after some cleanup efforts showed total PFAS concentrations in groundwater there reached 167,510 nanograms per liter. At the airport, total PFAS concentrations in groundwater have reached 15,583 nanograms per liter, according to Cambareri’s report.

The Hyannis Water District began removing PFAS from public drinking water wells contaminated by those sites in 2015 and has since brought the level of PFAS contamination in the public drinking water supply down to non-detect levels. 

Elsewhere: 'Forever chemicals' detected in Chatham drinking water wells

But Cambareri’s report found that PFAS emanating from the fire training academy and airport was redistributed across the village through contaminated well water before that treatment began. 

PFAS, which were designed to be water, stain and fire-resistant, are often called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down naturally in the environment. Rather, they accumulate, in soil, in water, in animals, and in people. Beyond firefighting foam, PFAS can be found in packaging, cooking pans, cosmetics and other consumer products.

Highly persistent PFAS from the fire training academy and airport distributed through Hyannis before drinking water treatment began are combining with highly persistent PFAS from consumer products that end up in wastewater from homes and businesses, Cambareri found.

PFAS from wastewater ends up in the groundwater in two ways. 

If a property is connected to a sewer , its wastewater is sent to the Barnstable Water Pollution Control facility, where it is treated — though not for PFAS — before being discharged into local groundwater.

If a property is not connected to the town's sewage treatment plant and relies on a septic system, its wastewater is leached into the groundwater on-site without being treated for PFAS. When the septic tank is pumped, the wastewater goes to the Barnstable Water Pollution Control Facility, where it is discharged into groundwater without being treated for PFAS.

All of this PFAS, from the fire training academy, the airport, the treatment plant or individual septic tanks, ends up in Hyannis’s groundwater, where it circulates throughout the village.

“The redistribution of primary PFAS sources in Hyannis resulted in widespread secondary groundwater contamination in the Hyannis area aquifer,” Cambareri wrote.

Schaider said Cambareri’s report is a reminder that local governments need to follow through on ongoing efforts to clean up sites that are highly contaminated with PFAS, including the fire training academy and airport.

“The Hyannis water system has gone to great lengths to treat the drinking water supply for the town, but as these results show, there are still elevated levels of PFAS in the groundwater and in the surface water in this whole area,” she said. “So it's important to, as much as we can, remediate the sources so that no new PFAS are getting out into the environment and for us to continue to monitor the levels in water and in fish over time.”

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What is the town doing in response to the report?

Barnstable Director of Public Works Daniel Santos denied the Times’ request to speak with Cambareri, the former water resources program manager for the Cape Cod Commission, about the report’s findings. 

The Barnstable Health Department referred questions to Santos, and Town Manager Mark Ells did not return a call to his office requesting an interview about the report. 

Santos said the biggest takeaway from Cambareri’s report is “that there is PFAS in surface waters and groundwaters throughout the town of Barnstable.”

That information will guide the town’s search for new sources of drinking water, as Cambareri’s report found surface water contamination correlates with groundwater contamination.

PFAS removed from town drinking water

“There is a drinking water standard that as we search for new sources of drinking water, it makes sense to find out whether we can put wells anywhere in town that aren't going to be affected with PFAS, or if we do, we want to understand what level of treatment we're going to need to put on them,” he said.

But Santos said there isn’t much more the town can do with the knowledge that many ponds are contaminated with PFAS because there is no state or federal standard for human exposure to PFAS in surface water bodies, only for drinking water. 

With no state or federal standard for surface waters, Santos said, the town is not required to take any action in response to the report’s findings.

In a joint response from the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Public Health sent in response to questions from the Times, DEP spokesperson Edmund Coletta said the state is not currently working on developing a standard for PFAS in surface water bodies.

"It would take considerable work to develop such a standard or advisory," Coletta wrote on behalf of the departments.

Santos said Barnstable is ahead of other communities that haven’t yet begun testing their surface waters for PFAS. 

“This is all new,” Santos said. “We get more information every week on it and we’re trying to get a sense of what the situation is in town, in groundwater, in drinking water, in ponds. We’re collecting data so that when we do get information from regulatory agencies, at least we’re out ahead of this and we understand where it is so that if they do put standards in place we can move and deal with it if that’s required.”

Cambareri’s report recommends implementing limits on PFAS in surface water bodies.

“Because 40% of the groundwater in the aquifer passes through ponds, a more stringent PFAS cleanup standard for surface water should be applicable on Cape Cod,” he wrote.

What does this mean for people who use the ponds?

Researchers are still working to determine the implications of PFAS contamination in surface water bodies.

Around the same time that Cambareri was paddling through Barnstable’s ponds to collect water samples for his study, staff with DEP and the U.S. Geological Survey were collecting water samples for PFAS analysis from 27 rivers in Massachusetts.

PFAS were detected in all 27 rivers sampled. Total PFAS levels ranged between 0.3 and 399 parts per trillion. The highest concentrations were observed downstream of wastewater effluent discharges, but PFAS were also found in rivers upstream of those discharges, according to DEP’s website. The lowest concentrations were found in rivers located in less populated areas.

“MassDEP will continue to identify future monitoring objectives, potential studies, and other actions to better understand and address the distribution of PFAS in surface waters, relative contributions of different sources, and implications for public health and aquatic life,” the DEP website states.

A fact sheet about use of ponds contaminated by chemicals applied at Joint Base Cape Cod produced by the DPH in 2021 says that potential exposure to PFAS associated with swimming, wading, boating or catch-and-release fishing would be much less than potential exposure from drinking water containing PFAS.

“This is because the amount of water ingested during recreational activities is much less than the amount ingested as drinking water, and because very little PFAS are absorbed through the skin,” the fact sheet states.

Coletta wrote that exposure from swimming in water bodies that test above the state drinking water standard for PFAS "would not automatically be expected to result in adverse health effects."

"The risk associated with recreational activities such as swimming would be dependent on the concentrations of PFAS and relative levels of ingestion, whether over a prolonged period or during a single event," Coletta wrote.

Two of the ponds the DPH fact sheet referenced, Ashumet Pond and Johns Pond in Mashpee, had concentrations of one PFAS compound called PFOS that reached 200 nanograms per liter, according to Joint Base Cape Cod Remediation Program Manager Rose Forbes.

DPH is in the midst of testing 16 water bodies approved for swimming in Barnstable, Bourne, Sandwich, Mashpee and Falmouth for PFAS, according to information provided by Forbes. 

The agency is collecting water samples from each water body, and fish samples from selected water bodies.

Schaider, who is leading Hyannis-based human health studies about PFAS exposure through drinking water, said exposure to PFAS through swimming in PFAS-contaminated ponds is unlikely to be significant.

“It's important for people to have this knowledge for people to know it would make sense to minimize how much water people are swallowing when they're out swimming, but it's unlikely to be a major source of exposure for most people,” she said.

But she did recommend that Cambareri’s report be followed up with testing of fish in the studied ponds, as some are popular spots for fishing and ice fishing.

“It can be difficult to predict in every case how much accumulation will happen among different types of fish, so I think the next step should be to conduct testing of fish to learn more about the levels of accumulation, particularly in ponds where people are consuming fish,” Schaider said.

Coletta wrote that the risk associated with consuming fish from PFAS-tainted water depends on the level in the fish's tissue, rather than the water.

DPH has not issued any advisories warning people not to enter a surface water body because of PFAS, according to Coletta. Neither the DPH or DEP have an estimate of how many surface water bodies are contaminated with PFAS in the state.

"The commonwealth continues to monitor surface water bodies for PFAS and will continue to do so, sharing data as they become available and developing a better understanding of the scope of the issue with data collection," Coletta wrote.