BARNSTABLE — After public comments urged a broader study of the scope of PFAS contamination emanating from the now-shuttered Barnstable County Fire Training Academy, county consultants have developed an expanded plan for the next phase of what will be a long and complicated cleanup effort.
Consultants will now search for evidence of PFAS contaminationfarther to the south and southeast of the academy, work that will help shed light on how far the “forever chemicals” — some of which have been linked to human health problems — have spread through soil, surface water, groundwater and even the area’s food chain.
PFAS chemicals (or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were present in firefighting foam used at the training academy.
Consultants presented the revised scope of work for the second phase of what is formally known as a comprehensive site assessment of the academy to the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners and the Assembly of Delegates on Jan. 5.
The completion of the site assessment report will take roughly eight to 10 months, according to Licensed Site Professional Roger Thibault, of BETA Group. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Edmund Coletta said the report was originally due on May 9, but because of the extensive nature of the proposed assessment, the county is discussing the potential for new deadlines with DEP.
“It is clear to both parties that due to the expansion of the Phase II work, the obstacles to releasing funding, and the requirement to incorporate the public review and comment, the county will not meet the May 9, 2022, deadline,” Coletta wrote in an email to the Times. “When MassDEP and the county have agreed upon deadlines, those deadlines will be made public.”
Thibault said his group will provide periodic updates to the public, detailing interim findings as work on the site assessment report progresses, likely on a quarterly basis, before publishing a draft report open to public comment.
“We're hoping and planning on mid-fall of 2022 for that milestone, and that will set the stage for the later phases where we basically figure out what to do about the problem,” Thibault told delegates.
What is the plan?
The regulations that govern the academy’s cleanup, called the Massachusetts Contingency Plan, require that the county evaluate the nature and extent of the PFAS plume creeping outwards from the property — both horizontally and vertically — in the comprehensive site assessment.
To do that evaluation, Thibault said, consultants will sample and test soil, groundwater and surface water at and around the academy. Some of those samples will come from existing monitoring wells in the area — including some owned by the Cape Cod Gateway Airport, which is now studying its own PFAS plume — but others will be pulled from new areas not yet sampled for PFAS.
“We have very significantly reworked and expanded the groundwater investigation program to take our study far to the south and east of the Fire Training Academy, towards the municipal airport and municipal wells to the south and east that may have been impacted,” Thibault told delegates.
The county will need to obtain access to private and town-owned land to do that investigation, which could take time, Thibault said.
The results of the soil and water tests will eventually be added to a computer model that will help map the PFAS plume as it exists today, and where groundwater flow patterns suggest it might go next.
Thibault said his team will take stock of the results they get along the way, and if tests suggest the plume is larger than anticipated, the county would consider taking samples from a wider area, including the land between the Cape Cod Gateway Airport and the Maher Wells, a source of public drinking water for the area.
If the county pursues that testing, the results could help shed light on how the academy’s PFAS plume is or isn’t interacting with the PFAS plume from the airport.
In addition to mapping the area’s PFAS contamination, BETA Group and its subconsultants — including GHD, an engineering firm with international experience in PFAS work — will assess potential risks to the environment and human health that the contamination might pose.
To conduct the ecological risk assessment, consultants will study two kettle ponds near the academy: Flintrock Pond, which has no known public access point, and Mary Dunn Pond, which is accessible via a small path. In addition to tests of groundwater, pond water and soil, the ecological risk assessment will involve some testing of pond fish, if they exist.
To conduct the human health risk assessment, which Thibault called the most important part of the report, BETA and its subconsultants will study the ways that people could be exposed to PFAS from the academy. Because nearby wells are being treated for PFAS by the Hyannis Water District, Thibault said public drinking water is not a likely exposure route, but consultants will research how coming into contact with contaminated groundwater, soil and even fish could affect people’s health.
As a defender of public education, I find it necessary to address some of the claims and assertions made in the Oct. 14, 2021 article about former Barnstable Schools Superintendent Meg Mayo-Brown.
For starters, Mayo-Brown’s contract was not renewed. Her leadership of the district — at least at the cost it was to the community — was not endorsed by the school committee.
Pivoting her career to the privately run, publicly funded charter school industry is her prerogative. However, when the story transitions from Mayo-Brown’s dubious departure from the district to her new venture, it becomes a booster piece for the charter school she is trying to open in New Bedford.
Officials in New Bedford and Fall River have already voiced their opposition to the opening of a 700-seat charter school in their region; charters drain money away from district public schools, a main reason that voters in Massachusetts overwhelmingly opposed a proposed expansion of charter schools in 2016.
And the flowery claims by the charter industry spokesman also need checking. Overwhelmingly, charter schools do not collaborate with their district counterparts. Charter schools also do not retain their educators; state data show that New Heights in Brockton, which Mayo-Brown says her school shall be modeled after, lost 50% of its educators over the past year.
Furthermore, both New Bedford and Fall River public high schools already offer early college programs, making it possible for students to earn college credits at no cost to them. There simply is no innovation at Mayo-Brown’s proposed Innovators charter.
Terry Kwan of Brookline, along with other Question 2 opponents, holds signs in Coolidge Corner. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)This article is more than 5 years old.
It was a clear victory for the No on 2 campaign. With 96 percent of precincts reporting, only 38 percent voted in favor of expansion while 62 percent voted against raising the cap. (See full results at the bottom of this story.)
Question 2 would have allowed as many as 12 new or expanded charter schools a year. Its defeat means new charter applications will continue to follow the existing rules, which tie the number of charter seats to a percentage of public school funding — 9 percent in most districts, and 18 percent in the lowest-performing ones.
'Elevate All Of Our Young People'
Opponents apparently swayed voters with their arguments that charter schools do not serve the neediest students, drain money from district schools, and could have proved "apocalyptic" for city budgets and led to less state oversight of how charters are run. In addition, even some supporters of charter schools in general expressed doubts about the specifics of the ballot question itself.
Rhianwen Kast-McBride, who is 15 years old, said she feels victorious.
"We just basically saved our schools," she said.
For weeks, she and her friends from Boston Arts Academy have been putting up posters and campaigning with their parents. They joined teachers, politicians and other supporters at the No on 2 watch party Tuesday night to see the results come in.
Another opponent of lifting the charter cap, Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson, says the results are a message that the people of Massachusetts want the state to improve the public schools we already have — not build new ones.
"Instead of picking or choosing winners or losers and having that corporate mentality, we need to have a communal mentality — one where we elevate all of our young people," Jackson said.
He is calling on state lawmakers to fully fund education -- and focus on building up schools in areas like Boston.
Disappointing Defeat For Question 2 Supporters
Backers of the effort to bring more charter schools to Massachusetts agree with that. Marty Walz -- who is with the group Great School Massachusetts, which campaigned in support of Question 2 -- said schools need more resources.
"From my point of view, it’s not just more money for more of the same," Walz said. "We need more money spent differently and more effectively so that we begin to close the achievement gaps."
Supporters of Question 2 had pointed to the high test scores achieved by many Massachusetts charter schools, multiple studies calling them the nation's best and the thousands of families on waiting lists for charters.
Charter schools receive funding from the districts their students come from. The state is mandated to follow a formula to reimburse the districts for this cost but has not fully funded those reimbursements for several years. The state has also underfunded the so-called "foundation budget," its share of the cost of running public schools, further squeezing local education budgets.
Supporters of raising the cap on charter schools say the defeat is disappointing, but they will continue the great work of current charter schools.
An Ardent, And Expensive, Campaign
The fight over the ballot question was among the most contentious, and by far the most expensive, in state history.
In the weeks leading up to the election, the two sides also focused many of their arguments on questions of who was backing their opponents. Nearly all funding for the opponents came from teachers' unions, leading to claims that the opposition was purely driven by the unions; most of the money in support came from out-of-state donors through groups that opponents attacked as "dark money" because they are not required to release donors' names.
The question split two political leaders who are usually in agreement on education: Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, who spoke out against it, and Gov. Charlie Baker, who campaigned in favor of it. More than 200 local school committees passed resolutions against raising the cap. State education officials, many of whom have ties to charter schools (as do Walsh and Baker), supported it.
A "yes" vote supported this proposal to authorize up to 12 new charter schools or enrollment expansions in existing charter schools by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education per year.
A "no" vote opposed this proposal to authorize up to 12 new charter schools or enrollment expansions in existing charter schools, thereby maintaining the current charter school cap.[1]
The notice states the airport’s Phase II Comprehensive Site Assessment, which airport staff submitted to DEP on March 12, violated the Massachusetts Contingency Plan. That body of regulations is designed to streamline and accelerate the assessment and cleanup of oil and hazardous materials released into the environment.
Airport staff are now charged with submitting a revised Phase II Report to DEP by Nov. 10. The revised report must incorporate DEP’s comments in the notice of noncompliance.
If the airport doesn’t complete the required actions by Nov. 10, DEP could levy daily administrative penalties.
To obtain full compliance, the notice warned, DEP could also pursue criminal prosecution; civil action including court-imposed civil penalties; or other forms of administrative action.
Airport staff consulted with the DEP after receiving the notice of noncompliance, assistant airport manager Matt Elia said last week, and are in the process of scheduling another meeting to go over the steps the airport needs to take to correct the deficiencies in its site assessment.
“Our goal is to achieve buy-in from DEP to make sure that they are fully on board with how we're going to move forward and that they are comfortable with that,” Elia said.
“We care very much about environmental stewardship,” he added. "In the big picture, the airport cares about that role we play in the community and we've made great strides to ensure the protection of natural resources.”
What did DEP’s audit find?
In the audit, the DEP took particular issue with the airport’s assertion that on-site releases of 1,4-dioxane and PFAS — two hazardous substances linked to health problems, including cancer — did not contribute to contamination of the nearby Maher wellfield. The wellfield is a source of public drinking water for the area.
Related:As Barnstable hunts for new sources of public drinking water, PFAS contamination rears its ugly head
DEP staff identified several gaps in the data provided in the site assessment, as well as problems with calculations that airport consultants used to back the finding that off-site contamination is to blame for the well contamination.
The airport reports “conclusions that the 1,4-dioxane and PFAS compounds in the Maher Wells has not originated from the Airport are not adequately supported at this time,” the notice read.
Among other gaps, the site assessment didn’t fully catalogue the location of past fire training exercises at the airport, during which firefighting foam loaded with PFAS was used. The airport’s assessment also failed to document where the firefighting foam was stored and where hoses and equipment were cleaned before 1996, the audit found.
In addition, the site assessment did not address the full scope of PFAS compounds used at the airport, according to the DEP. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of thousands of human-made chemicals, six of which are currently regulated by the state.
An unexplained lack of testing for 1,4-dioxane both on and near airport grounds was also flagged by DEP staff.
What’s next?
The airport is currently gathering the additional information the DEP requested in the notice of non-compliance, Elia said.
“We jumped right on this to make sure that we can document and gather the necessary data to show why we believe in the science we put in there and to add information and further document their areas of concern,” he said.
As part of that effort, Elia said, airport consultants and staff will pull together information left out of the site assessment to better explain why the airport stands by its claim that contamination from the airport hasn’t reached the Maher wellfield.
“This is a very complex site,” Elia said. “There are other locations and other sources that are impacting the area here.”
Who pays rising costs
The town-owned airport is less than a mile away from the county-owned Barnstable County Fire Rescue and Training Academy, where decades of use of PFAS-laden firefighting foam resulted in severe groundwater contamination that is still being studied.
Town officials recently criticized the county’s draft plan for assessing the scope of PFAS contamination at the fire-training academy as inadequate, and urged the county to extend its sampling effort to the Maher wells.
'A hodgepodge': Draft PFAS assessment plan for Barnstable fire academy plume is inadequate
Costs associated with PFAS contamination are rising fast for local governments.
The town of Barnstable has spent upwards of $22 million to address PFAS contamination. The airport, which uses a separate operating budget, has spent $1.29 million on the problem. And the county is now compiling its own PFAS-related expenses.
Public and private entities are within their rights to search for other parties that could share the liability for contamination costs, said Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod.
But the search for other potentially responsible parties shouldn’t delay comprehensive efforts to identify and clean up contamination, he said.
“Ultimately, the longer you wait to do something, the more it costs,” Gottlieb said. “In this instance, we've got a couple of public entities squabbling over assigning responsibility to one another. At the end of the day, it will be the same people who have to reach into their pockets to finance the solution.”
Betsy Young, president of the Greater Hyannis Civic Association, said residents will be closely monitoring both the town’s and the county’s PFAS assessment and cleanup efforts in the village.
“If the town and the county can’t work through a reasonable plan for us, it is the citizens of Hyannis, really, that are going to suffer here,” Young said. “There is going to have to be a giant amount of money thrown at this problem.”
Attorney Robert Bilott — who played a pivotal role in proving the companies that manufactured and sold products containing PFAS, including firefighting foam, hid the chemicals’ dangers for decades — recently told Massachusetts lawmakers that taxpayers shouldn’t shoulder the burden of cleaning up PFAS contamination at all.
“These fire departments, these airports, the state of Massachusetts — none of the taxpayers here should have to pay this,” he said. “We know who the responsible parties are. They should be paying for it.”
Attempts to reach officials from the Airport Commission, which oversees the airport, were unsuccessful.
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.
State DEP:PFAS chemical contamination at Hyannis airport not investigated enough
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.
Keating:Air Force agrees to pay for PFAS cleanups in Mashpee and Falmouth wells
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 reportthat, 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.
Help needed: Cape towns look to Congress to help pay PFAS cleanup costs
“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.”
'A hodepodge':'A hodgepodge': Draft PFAS assessment plan for Barnstable fire academy plume is inadequate
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.
As Barnstable hunts for new sources of public drinking water, PFAS contamination rears its ugly head
Jeannette Hinkle Cape Cod Times
Published Sep 3, 2021
HYANNIS — In its hunt for new sources of drinking water, Barnstable must grapple with a grim reality spelled out in an April 2021 report by the engineering firm Weston & Sampson.
“...It is generally understood that any source developed in Barnstable has a risk of detection of PFAS,” the report’s authors wrote.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of thousands of man-made chemicals, some of which have been linked to health problems including increased cholesterol, immune system issues, cancer and thyroid hormone disruption.
Barnstable — home to three documented sources of significant PFAS contamination including the former Barnstable County Fire Rescue & Training Academy, the Cape Cod Gateway Airport and the Barnstable Water Pollution Control Facility — is already treating Hyannis’s existing drinking water to remove the “forever” chemicals.
Because of the treatment, estimated to cost $900,000 annually, town officials say the water that flows out of the taps in Hyannis is safe to drink.
But the wells currently on line don’t yield enough water to meet all demand, according to a 2019 report by Weston & Sampson.
In 2020, the deficit in the Hyannis water system was 1.87 million gallons per day, according to the report. By 2040, that deficit is projected to grow to 3.23 million gallons per day, an increase of roughly 72%.
'Forever chemicals': PFAS detected in Chatham drinking water wells
“Weston & Sampson recommends that the Town of Barnstable should immediately initiate the investigation and development of additional sources of groundwater supply, which will take years to bring on line,” the authors of the 2019 report wrote.
Barnstable has now zeroed in on three new potential sources of drinking water. One is north of Route 6 in the Bridge Street Conservation Area, another is north of Route 6 west near Old Jail Lane, and one is in the West Barnstable Conservation area, according to Weston & Sampson’s April 2021 report.
PFAS: Cape towns look to Congress to help pay cleanup costs
Despite the comprehensive search focused in less-developed areas of Barnstable, two of the three most promising sources identified by Weston & Sampson have water quality problems. The potential well site in the West Barnstable Conservation Area would require treatment for manganese, and the the Bridge Street Conservation Area would require treatment for PFAS.
Why is the town considering new drinking water sources that are tainted?
Contamination is only one of many considerations town officials will weigh as they select a new source of drinking water, said Hans Keijser, supervisor of the Barnstable Water Supply Division.
Also at play are other factors, such as who owns the land, whether the area is considered for future development, how much it would cost to build in that location, and how much water the town can safely withdraw. The source contaminated with PFAS, for example, is expected to yield the highest quantity of water of the three new sources under strong consideration.
“The upper management and leadership in town have to make the decision, what’s more important?” Keijser said. “It’s not, ‘Is there contamination? Yes or no.‘ It’s a little bit more complex than that.”
Contamination may once have been a deal-breaker in the search for new drinking water supplies, but is now so widespread that a supplier would be lucky to find a pristine source, said Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod.
Photos: Barnstable County Fire Training Academy Buildings Demolished
A big reason for that, he said, is the Cape’s reliance on septic systems, which become depositories for all of the chemicals that people consume in their daily lives, ranging from antidepressants to PFAS, which is still used in consumer products ranging from cooking pans to cosmetics to waterproof fabrics.
“The vast majority of wastewater treatment on Cape Cod happens in backyard septic systems, none of which are intended to remove contaminants,” Gottlieb said. “So you have a hundred-and-something thousand individual small backyard-based point sources that provide access to the groundwater for unregulated contaminants and emerging contaminants like PFAS, like perchlorate before it, as well as things that are much more benign.”
Until recently, Gottlieb said, Cape Cod’s water quality was good enough that suppliers didn’t need to consider treating the water it pulled from the ground before sending it to people’s homes and businesses.
“I think the sad reality is those days are coming to an end,” he said. “We have to just wake up to the fact that as long as we remain a society that intensely uses chemicals and relies on 18th-century treatment technology to deal with our waste, those chemicals are going to find their way into the groundwater. And it is completely unacceptable for it to be this way.”
“What we’re finding out here on Cape Cod is that everything is connected,” Keijser said. “Wastewater, drinking water, everything people use or abuse, it's all together. (Barnstable Town Manager) Mark Ells often says, ‘We drink the water we stand on.’ With that comes enormous responsibility for everybody in the community. If people really think about that, hopefully, they’ll change their behavior.”
On Cape Cod, 100% of the drinking water is pumped from the region's sole-source aquifer.
In summer 2020, Tom Cambareri of Sole Source Consulting collected samples taken from 21 ponds in Barnstable, under the assumption that pond water quality is a good bellwether for groundwater quality. PFAS compounds were present in every pond sample tested, in quantities ranging from 2.5 nanograms per liter to 252 nanograms per liter. The drinking waterstandard for the six PFAS compounds currently regulated by the state is 20 nanograms per liter.
Sen. Cyr: 'Lot of work to do' considering expansion of PFAS monitoring
The authors of the 2021 Weston & Sampson report said those findings mean that PFAS contamination is so ubiquitous, the town should still consider using water sources contaminated with the chemicals, and factor in the cost of treating that water in making a final selection.
“There's plenty of water,” Santos said this week. “It's just that the most cost-effective way to get it is by not having to treat it for contaminants.”
Questions linger about the future effectiveness of PFAS treatment
Laurel Schaider is a senior scientist at Silent Spring Institute, where she leads water quality research on PFAS, research that now includes Hyannis-based human health studies on the effects of consuming PFAS-tainted water.
Schaider said the system used to clean the water in Hyannis is a standard method that does a good job of removing the six PFAS compounds regulated by the state.
But she noted that the Environmental Protection Agency estimates more than 9,000 chemicals fall into the PFAS family, and a Harvard study published in the spring found PFAS compounds in Cape Cod streams that aren’t captured by most current testing methods.
“There's certainly the potential that in the future we may learn about other PFAS that might also be present in the water, and not all PFAS are equally well removed by all types of treatment,” she said. “That’s why it would be preferable to choose a place where there isn’t PFAS in the first place, rather than having to treat.”
Health: State expert recommends blood testing for PFAS contaminant
She acknowledged that's easier said than done.
“I don't envy the people who have to make these decisions, because it's not easy,” Schaider said.
Department of Environmental Protection Public Affairs Director Edmund Coletta said his agency has been searching for new sources of water in Hyannis.
Cape Cod is not alone in grappling with the effects of contamination, he said.
“The urbanization of southeastern Massachusetts is increasing the challenge of finding adequate water supplies,” Coletta wrote in an email. “Municipalities that long ago preserved land for aquifer protection have an advantage in providing pure drinking water to their citizens.”
“Barnstable is not unique in its challenge to locate water sources to serve an increasing population, and water quality issues aren’t just a problem for southeastern Massachusetts or the Cape,” he added. “As an example, there are many locations across the state, new and old, that are now dealing with the issue of PFAS contamination.”
