Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water | Hacker News Reader

Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

latimes.com

I grew up approximately 2.5 miles from a major rocket manufacturer. We're talking R&D and manufacturing of jet propulsion and rocket systems since the 80s.

They totally polluted the water tables in the area with by-products of rocket fuel and other industrial chemicals used to clean engines.

They were fined in the 90s and supposedly worked with local water authorities to setup a filtration system... but decades later, they're still finding the pollutants are actually SPREADING to adjacent water tables in communities miles from the original location.

Even worse... many women from the community I grew up in have developed strange autoimmune disorders in their 40s and 50s. Like, a truly abnormal number of them. Many of these women are upper middle class, health conscious, non-smokers, including many athletes. Among those disorders, one of the common ones is issues with their thyroid.

Turns out that one of the major byproducts of rocket combustion - if consumed - is known to fuck up your thyroid.

Am I saying that I know for sure that the pollution of the water tables caused all these women to develop these strange disorders? I can't say for sure. I respect the scientific process and I certainly don't want to jump to any unfair or drastic conclusions, but it seems likely.

As recently as 2011 the area was again hit with a $60 million fine for cleanup. A slap on the wrists for the level of ecological damage they've caused. The water basin in this area is permanently damaged, and seems (even after decades or rain fail) to still be seeping into surrounding areas.

EDIT: For those wanting more specifics...

Aerojet / Rocketdyne is the company. Rancho Cordova is the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerojet#EPA_Superfund_sites

I'd like to hear more about your neighbors experiencing autoimmune disorders. My wife is going through something similar. She has been the picture of health until this past year when she suddenly started exhibiting many symptoms that point to thyroid disorder, yet her endocrinologist says there is nothing wrong with her thyroid. She grew up in Southern California, so if the women in your community are finding success in treating their disorders, I would like my wife's doctors to take a look in this direction. Thanks.

I'm so sorry to hear about your wife. I recommend getting multiple opinions. Unfortunately, much of this research is new and largely varies from doctor to doctor. I don't know specifics (since I'm luckily not a patient) but from what I've heard, there are many different metrics to look at. It's not as simple as any one blood marker.

As for treatments, I wish I had good news. Unfortunately, the women I know who are dealing with this are not seeing great results at all. Some have tried IGIF, Methotrexate, and steroids. It's difficult to call any of their treatments a 'success'. I guess if you consider the fact that they're still alive, that's success... But their quality of life is a fraction of what it once was.

> Even worse... many women from the community I grew up in have developed strange autoimmune disorders in their 40s and 50s.

Interesting myself, my wife, and a number of friends have remarked on how a lot of people around us are getting sick with difficult to explain neurological illness in the past few years.

I try to keep my skeptical hat on and say it’s all probably within some base rate, and we are just older, etc. but it doesn’t feel like it and multiple people are having the same bad feeling.

There’s little overlap the people affected though. (The closest thing to a cluster would be Silicon Valley.) I really do hope that the health agencies and CDC are properly doing their job and we’re not missing some response developing to a fairly widespread unrecognized pollutant.

Silicon Valley, as the name indicates, was once the world capital of semiconductor manufacture.

It leads the nation in Superfund sites per square mile.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/lens/the-superfund-sites-...

Are you talking about the Santa Susana Labs that was used by Rocketdyne for a period of time? Or is there another area with a similarly screwed up story?

I live in the area (about 5 miles south of the former lab) and didn't hear anything about it until I moved here. Since then I've read stories about how people living in Simi Valley used to be able to watch some of their rocket tests.

Those labs are also the site of one of the worst nuclear power incident in the US - but this was in the 50s. There are also reports of Rocketdyne shooting barrels of chemicals until they exploded into the 90s. Apparently they regularly and illegally disposed of contaminated materials by burning them in open air pits. That's a little insane.

Bethpage NY has issues with the groundwater near the old Grumman facility.

I would venture to bet there are probably dozens of such sites across the country.

It’s remarkable how irresponsible people will be if they’re allowed.

They did all kinds of crazy stuff in the name of rocket science.

Nothing like HF as an exhaust gas...

Or injecting liquid mercury into an already carcinogenic nitrogen tetroxide/hydrazine-burning chamber to boost the thrust...

For anyone interested in knowing more about the bonkers rocket research that went on in the 60s and 70s, I recommend the book Ignition! by John D Clark.

Publisher's Site: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/ignition/978081359583...

My Review: https://sheep.horse/2019/3/book-_ignition%21_by_john_d_clark...

I just want to follow this up with a rather sad and disturbing metric[1] from the EPA regarding this superfund site in Rancho Cordova:

"...groundwater extraction and treatment systems (GETs) are operating throughout the site: ARGET, GET A, GET B, GET D, GET E/F, GET H-A, GET J, GET K-A, GET L-A and GET L-B. Together, they remove over 20 million gallons of contaminated groundwater each day on average. Through the end of 2010, all groundwater extraction and treatment systems in OU-3 and OU-5 have treated a cumulative total of 107,000 million gallons of groundwater and removed more than 850,000 pounds of chemical contaminants. Western"

Just think about that. 850,000 pounds of chemical contaminates removed from the DRINKING WATER of surrounding communities. If you ask me, pollution on this level should be criminal. It's projected to take 200+ years to fully cleanup. Where's the concern over public health? Barely being discussed.

I've heard some people say that it's "all cleaned up" and "the water is totally safe". I'm skeptical. Sure, those systems are in place, and designed to extract known chemicals... But:

a) What's the error rate? Surely, some is let through.

b) What about the unknown chemicals? What in that froth of contaminated soil has yet to be identified as carcinogenic, neurotoxic, etc.? Surely some of that isn't targeted for removal in the filtration process?

...

Some whom I've spoken with doubt that industrial pollutants are the cause of the strange rise in auto immune disorders in the community. They generally seem pretty averse to the idea that a corporation could damage the environment in such a way. It's a weird "us and them" way of thinking... Any discussion of ecological damage is written off in their minds as a necessary evil for progress. I come from a background steeped in respect for science, engineering, and business yet I don't share that view.

I recommend "The Devil We Know" if you're skeptical about industrial pollutants [2].

[1] https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fus...

[2] https://youtu.be/hs4mzSPIzXo

I wonder: is there any small, analytics device for home usage that will gauge your drinking water and tell you pollutant levels? Is there anything like that? Maybe for air?

Ah, yes. Good ol' Aerojet. I grew up in Chino Hills, CA near the base of their operation there. As a kid, playing in the gullies around the area, we didn't really question the sounds of munitions in the background during the day--until we became teenagers and started exploring it.

After a few friends retrieved spent (and unspent) mortar shells, it quickly was guarded and a project to clean up the site was initiated.

These fine folks have been following the closure, cleanup and build over of the facility for some time: https://www.enviroreporter.com/investigations/aerojet-chino-...

For the low price of only $3.5M, you too can own a nice house on a toxic waste site: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2276-Celano-Ct-Chino-Hill...

Pretty common story from industrial and military waste. I had a biochemistry professor from Oklahoma whose hometown was exposed to industrial pollutants and the population had a substantially increased rate of endocrine cancers over decades.

You aren't, by chance, referring to Rocketdyne and Simi Valley are you? Bc I lived in Simi in the 90s and this is freaking me out.

Rocketdyne yes, Simi Valley no.

I feel like everyone thinks Flint and Erin Brockovich were the only two water incidents in the country. If you look for water pollution news - you'll find that places near garbage dumps are coming up highly toxic, all over the country. Everyone seems to think the administration has it under control. They don't. There is benzene, hexavalent chromium and thousands of pollutants found in our water all over the country. There are literally millions of properties on well water in the country that are not checked but once every 20 years (if that). The only fix is rain catchment, before it goes into the ground. Soil remediation and stopping people from contaminating!!!! In all political parties groundwater and soil contamination is going to come to a head soon.

The risk of getting sick from rainwater may be different depending on your location, how frequently it rains, the season, and how you collect and store the rainwater. Dust, smoke, and soot from the air can be dissolved in rainwater before it lands on your roof. Roofing materials, gutters, piping, and storage materials can introduce harmful chemicals like asbestos, lead, and copper to the water, though building standards minimize some of this. Dirt and germs can be washed into collected rainwater from the roof, especially when rain follows several days of dry weather.

https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/rainwater-...

Agreed. There are nearly 4,000 sites in the U.S. with double the lead levels of Flint: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lead-map/reuters-find...

Our future has really been stolen from us. Decades of pollution from greed and decadence and excess, as Thunberg says “fantasies of eternal economic growth”, have totally destroyed our future (speaking as a young person). Climate change robs us of a stable world, robots rob us of our livelihoods, and decades of ‘economic growth’ have poisoned our bodies and minds from birth through polluted water, air, and food.

Everything is an ecosystem. You can’t have wild growth without paying for it, and the people of the past 75 years have stolen our bright futures from us and stuck us with the bill. Your comment reminded me of just how fucked up everything is. I think the 21st century will be consumed by the efforts to clean up the giant mess the 20th century left us. Goodbye economic growth. They stripmined the timeline and left us nothing.

Cleaning all that stuff up is an opportunity for growth. Entire industries will need to be involved in order to pull it off.

That’s like saying poisoning is good for people because the sicker people are, the more hospitals and doctors you’ll need. The money has to come from somewhere. There is no profit in cleaning up messes, just loss reduction. The money, trillions of dollars just for climate change alone, has to come from somewhere. If past generations had not been so greedy, that money would be in our pockets. Instead, it will be burned because we have to clean up the unfathomable messes older people have created.

No, it is saying that it is worth it to clean up after ignorance and folly.

And there are eventually gains to be had.

Those clean areas are worth more, the money paid to labor means demand, growth, etc...

Sounds like the broken window fallacy: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fa...

The fallacy is that it's good to break windows. Even though it's not good to break them, fixing windows that are already broken is worthwhile.

In some cases, sure, where there is a clearly identifiable problem. But widespread pollution is particularly insidious because it can cause large amounts of people to develop serious health issues that have no clear cause and no reliable treatment.

Only on hacker news would your comment be ok and the parent is downvoted

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Sure. That's great. But where are the incentives to promote this "opportunity" to those who want to do so without net loss?

I would also like to add Willow Grove Airforce Base to this list. There is a cancer ring around Horsham thanks to this foam.

Filter your water if you live anywhere near an airport or military base anywhere, it's not just California.

In Satellite Beach, Florida, the contamination from Patrick AFB was discovered after a group of Satellite Beach High alumni realized they all developed cancer around the same time and decided to start digging. [https://pfasproject.com/2018/08/08/satellite-beach-florida-f...]

They dumped everything in a trench...not realizing there was an underground waterflow there. :/

I'd also just filter/test your water everywhere :( I'm in Chicago, and my daughter and I decided to test some public water fountains near the city zoo for lead. Thought it would be an interesting way to expose her to more science. I also had a suspicion of water fountains I've been finding now "capped" and no longer working. One of the fountains we tested with a home test kit from Home Depot came up positive for lead. Luckily I know some folks in the city we reached out too about our test and now that water fountain has been capped too.

This has made me super paranoid now of all water everywhere.

There's also an epidemic of cyanobacterial (also known as blue green "algae") contamination around the US.

We've traveled all over the country and have personally encountered it everywhere -- from Oregon to New York to central Florida...it's all over the midwest, in the Great Lakes -- seems to be anywhere there's farming.

I'm not sure what you do for that, though -- not sure it can be filtered, and boiling just makes it worse as it's toxic when it's dead. I'm honestly more terrified of cyanobacteria than PFAS, and it's everywhere.

It's cumbersome, but I think you can use something like Steripen for that (UV).

That might kill the algae but likely won't destroy most of the toxins in the water that the algae produce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanotoxin

Do the toxins get carried on along with distillation as well?

That's ridiculously energy-intensive and you'd probably have to re-mineralise it before storage or consumption to be on the safe side. Cooking might actually be the worst issue here, low-mineralisation cooking water would leech minerals out, leading to lower nutrient intake (unless yo keep the cooking water for drinking).

Distillation would make the water safe, reverse osmosis should also work. You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water and you don't need to worry about leaching your pots and pans.

> You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water

That's exactly the issue I'm pointing out in using distilled water from cooking, you will lose those minerals in the food to cooking water unless you drink it, so a normally proper died would not be anymore.

I doubt it, tap water and distilled water are both substantially lower in minerals than food, effectively 0 in comparison, I suspect if you boil your foods in either water the mineral content of the resulting food will be roughly the same.

The trick with algae is to stop it before it happens, which mostly deals with agricultural runoff.

Herbicides, specifically (https://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/news/2009/fe052/researchers-stu...). The stuff has adapted to eat glyphosate like candy. Makes sense when you see where it flourishes (like wheat and sugarcane-growing areas -- The Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Okeechobee releases fuel the blooms on the west and east coasts of Florida).

FWIW I witnessed a tweaker perched on top of one those public water fountains on the LFT, washing his bottom. I'd need to be nearly dead from dehydration to drink from one at this point.

Yeah. I’ve been running 10 miles now at a time and I still refuse to use those things. I’m thankful the zoo has vending machine that that Apple Pay :)

My father, who was in the aircraft refueling industry for decades until his passing earlier this year, would routinely rant about his customers' (the airports, generally) tolerance for leaking jet fuel into the ground.

He reported, and I have no source aside from him, that JFK allows up to 10,000 gallons of jet fuel to leak into the ground. Per day. And he claimed that most airports with hydrant systems had similarly large allowances.

I used to live across from the FedEx section of Memphis International, could see it over my fence. I used to watch with binoculars. They absolutely spill(ed) tons of fuel and did nothing to try cleaning it up.

> not realizing there was an underground waterflow there

I'm amazed whenever I see this. (A) what makes it okay to just dump stuff in a ditch? (B) are these people really clueless that no leaching through soil occurs?

> what makes it okay to just dump stuff in a ditch?

Lack of accountability. They did a calculation, and decided the risk of lawsuits several decades down the line is worth not paying to properly dispose their waste today.

There's a big difference between accountability and having to base your actions around what makes you the least sue-able and I think we can all agree that the latter has some serious side effects.

The various secret government programs did whatever it took to protect our precious bodily fluids from foreign contamination. Visible hazardous waste disposal is a great indicator that something interesting going on. So you hide it in a hole and pretend it's for the greater good of whatever dogma you sold your soul to.

Lord knows how much hazardous waste has been carelessly buried under orders from dogmatic maniacs obsessed with "winning" at all cost, including our future.

"Earth Day" was an event that happened only every decade up until 1990 when it became an annual event. This concept that what we do has a direct impact on the environment has only been a mainstream idea since the mid-1990s. Outside of super liberal areas like California, things didn't really kick off until Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006. By the standards of the day, just digging the ditch and covering it afterwards was considered forward-thinking in most rural locales.

See also: "burn pits."

My dad used to talk about this in the 80's and 90's just dumping solvents etc from maintenance shops right into the creek behind the air force base. It was just SOP. That creek runs straight to a river (about 4 miles) in a major metro area of California.

Any sources on what filters are effective?

Looks like reverse osmosis or carbon filters -- found this from Michigan State University:

"To know if a filter is NSF certified for the removal of PFOA and PFOS look for NSF P473 or NSF Certified to Standard P473 on the product, packaging, or specifications. Two types of filters recommended are granular activated carbon (GAC) and reverse osmosis (RO) filters."

(https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/list-of-household-filters-appr...)

I’m grateful to those who have fought and sacrificed for our rights. I think somewhere up the chain things get wonky. With our astronomical military budgets it should be easy to earmark two things: veterans’ benefits and ecological cleanup

This is a big deal here in Michigan as well, due to various other industries using PFAS-laden chemicals in industrial settings. Around here it's mostly tanneries that used these chemicals and then wantonly dumped them in municipal dumps or the companies bought land and just dumped the chemicals there. Entire communities are now being discovered to be polluted.

The same problem exists with PFC foam used at military and civilian airports in Germany (and probably around the world): https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/report-muenchen/bunde... (in German)

It's a worldwide problem. I would safely guess just about every airfield in America is dealing with this issue, even if there hasn't been a specific article written about it yet.

There have been many articles written about it, google "PFAS contamination".

I moved into a new house last year near 2 closed down USAF military bases (known to have been previously contaminated by firefighter foam) and did a ton of research on the issue since the house water comes from a well (free water!). I ended up getting a professional water filtration system installed in our basement (carbon tanks, UV light filter, reverse osmosis). Cost me $5k+ for install and ~$1500 year to swap out the tanks and service the system. It's pricey but you can't put a price on clean water.

There’s gotta be a cheaper ongoing way to do this. For the carbon, should be possible to buy it by the barrel. Germicidal UV lights should be cheap (they’re mainly uncoated fluorescent lamps) and dunno about the RO membranes...

There was a cancer cluster at the CFA Fiskville training facility in Victoria, AUS.

My uncle was station chief there for many years and recently died of complications after surgery to remove tumors. He was suffering back pain for a while and was diagnosed with spinal cancer. No one in the family was aware there was a cluster reported.

Same with U.S. Air Force bases using PFAS all over the country.

https://www.ewg.org/research/pfas-chemicals-contaminate-us-m...

Just to add some anecdotes. Two of my friends who lived in U.S. Air Force Bases where PFAS contamination was confirmed, had both of their firstborns suffer from congenital birth defects.

Which supports the study below published in 2014, though the issue was ONLY brought to light in 2018. Meaning the DoD waited 4 years.

Perfluorooctanoate Exposure and Major Birth Defects

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4117925/

Can someone recommend a consumer water testing kit that covers things like this?

No, you can't test for PFAS with consumer kit, it's dangerous at 70 parts-per-trillion levels and is tricky to handle without contamination. The test itself is expensive, too. I'm in the part of Rockford, Michigan contaminated by Wolverine/Hush Puppies/Caterpillar shoe leather tannery scraps, and they've paid Rose & Westra GZA to send techs to my house every 6 months. A friend just outside the supposedly affected area paid $300 to have a test performed, which came back with <5ppt (to my house's 35-45ppt).

And that's just one possible issue. You can't feasibly test for every possible exotic contaminant.

In my case, however, a pair of 48"x10" granular activated carbon filters (with auxiliary sediment filters, water softener, and UV light) have proven completely effective at removing PFAS from my water.

"In my case, however, a pair of 48"x10" granular activated carbon filters ..."

Are those backwashing filters with a head unit that contains a pump ? What level (micron) of filtration does just that unit achieve ?

Just curious ...

No pump, just passthrough. I don't believe they provide any filtration, just reaction mass/catalyst. I can take a picture tomorrow if you're curious.

Those sound like big filters. Where are they installed, and how often do you replace? Or is that just pitcher volume?

They're in my unfinished basement. Culligan (on Wolverine's dime) handles the service, had one replacement in almost 2 years. They just disconnect,install refurbished units, and bring my old ones back to contain the chemical waste and repack with fresh carbon.

Typically the filter is a tube with connectors on end. Most soda fountain machines have a pair of inline 36" x 6" filter for activated charcoal and water softeners mounted on the wall somewhere.

The problem with tests is that they look for what you know to look for at one point in time.

If you’re going to go down that road, better to just get carbon filter and R/O filtering setup.

How can people in the US live with this level of poison in the water? I would think that the government would pick up on it and get it fixed. It is an essential element for life. Even before we start talking to damage to the environment.

The US government is the biggest polluter of them all. The US government does not care about human health or environmental preservation. Yet Americans in general cling to some deep belief that their government cares for them, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Is that why most people are inactive in showing their opinion to the government? There have been nice developments in the last years, but there probably should be more initiatives.

This is the argument that I use against more taxation. If you pay more taxes it will be spent by these guys who as many example shows will commit enormous crimes against humanity without real consequences.

Exactly. It's mind boggling to constantly hear, "The Government does so many bad things! We need to give them more money so they'll stop!"

Huh??

Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gI-RbqHEKQ

The EPA fact sheet on PFAS : https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-pfas

Can be filtered out of your drinking water with a reverse osmosis filter. If you live in the Bay Area its a useful thing to have, and if you're concerned about your tap water you can send a sample here: https://torrentlab.com/drinking-and-storm-water-quality-test...

This kind of reminds of when we dump tons of salt on the roads when winter storms come around the east coast. It solves one problem but what other problems is it causing?

It would be incredibly naive to think dumping all these chemicals on the ground wouldn't cause some type of negative externality.

You are confusing different classes of chemical contaminants. Rock salt which is spread on roads consists of a chemical subset of seasalt - which is completely safe to humans as evidenced by healthy coastal communities.

The contaminants discussed here are of an entirely different class, they are toxic at trace levels. Sea salt and rock salt are ubiquitous natural materials, if they were toxic at low levels plagues of disease would occur until animals evolved resistance to them.

It's not just about humans. Waterways, wildlife, agriculture. The term "Salt the Earth" is shorthand for covering land with enough salt to prevent anything from growing.

Whether it's directly benign to humans is one thing, but the indirect effects are hard to account for.

That phrase appears to be apocryphal, salt quickly disperses in practice and no land has ever been known to be deliberately contaminated by it.

I feel these vague worries about road salting relate to this article about highly toxic contamination as a kind of "what-about-ery" but are even less connected by having been introduced as "kind-of-reminds-me-about-ery".

We're dancing around the point here.

Point being, that we cannot always determine the effects of continuously repeating small, seemingly benign actions. Taking tens of thousands of tons of salt from one place on Earth and dumping it on another where salt is relatively scarce has unknown side effects.

Hand-waving over it with "eh, but it probably won't hurt anything" misses the point of the discussion. That is the attitude that tends to get us trouble.

Smoking: "eh, that's probably not what's causing you to get sick" Climate change: "eh, it's probably not us" etc.

Since you are curious I really suggest you look into it - read some environmental studies and articles on salt pollution, get some details on the actual situation to offer rather than you know, just sayings and analogies.

It rusts cars for one. It could make the soil too salty for growing if runoff accumulates in one place, but usually it will be diluted too much to matter. I don't know if chemicals other than salt are used commonly on roads, that could cause other issues.

Calcium chloride is also used -- it is more effective per pound and is thus cheaper to transport, plus it works at lower temperatures. And it rusts cars even more aggressively.

Zeolites are one of the widely used alternatives developed specifically to replace salt use. They are an oil derivative, so I am not hopeful of their long term effects. They are also very expensive comparatively.

Zeolites are used as catalysts in processing oil, but they're not oil derivatives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite

Yes, I was wrong due to lack of research. I knew someone who had worked a lot on them at Chevron when i was a kid and just presumed.

Zeolites? Oil derivative?

Northern Maine is too poor to afford significant amounts of road salt, so they supplement heavily with plain dirt and sand.

No, it's because salt stops working below a certain temperature.

That's often added for traction. We do that widely in Canada, even when salt is not used.

The excess salt can disrupt soil ecosystems, but salt is not poisonous or carcinogenic. It's just a matter of having to much in the soil/water, which isn't permanent.

I'm really sensitive to whatever it is they've started using in the last decade or so. Get rashes and itchy eyes/nose just from particles coming in through the air vents. I often entertain moving back to the DC area, but every winter visit adds another notch in the "No way" column.

It reminds me of the flame-retardant chemicals used widely in furniture in the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49000966

EPA Superfund sites --- ok I did not know about this until this thread... omg!

I just recently found out the Shoreline Park in Mountain View used to be a landfill for most of bay area and SF. Today it is open to enjoy like it's some natural bird sanctuary.. yet there are pipes underground extracting methane 24x7 and I think I found a methane release valve last weekend right next to a jogging path... Can anyone confirm plz? => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq3CnXU5OtU

Methane outgassing is a known issue within the Shoreline Amphitheatre itself! It's built on a former dump.

During the earliest events there in the 1980s, concertgoers seated on the lawn set it afire when trying to smoke!

(And, yes, it's misnamed. It's a theatre, not an amphitheatre.)

There are EPA Superfund sites all over the valley. One of the worst was across the street from the Ice Center and Spartan Stadium.

Sad that we live by the contaminate now and see what happens later montra

I was always told that this foam wasn't toxic

The problem seems to be that just because it isn't acutely toxic non-chemist military personal treated it like it wasn't also chronically toxic.

Well if the choice is between getting sprayed with burning jet fuel or sprayed with fluorinated foam I will take the foam every time.

Maybe we should save the good stuff like halon and PFAS foam for emergencies and use something more eco for training.

In principle, but otoh it makes a lot of sense to train with the same stuff you use for real.

That being said, recently non-flourinated firefighting foams have been developed (based on some sugars IIRC), so there's hope these will be able to replace the old stuff.

NE Michigan is suffering from the pollution of PFAS as well. Been aware of it for about 9 years now but really only in the past year, maybe two, has the cleanup and awareness gained traction. It's still used in firefighting foam and any area near an Air Force or Army base likely has high risk of exposure to it.

Well, I wasn't expecting to see the airport I'm sitting at in the news today...

Slightly related, but there is a big issue with new aircraft hangar fire suppression systems because of the regulation of foam now. Regulators don't want anyone to use foam but there isn't a better solution out there yet.

This happened here in Sweden too. Same chemical, same problem. A huge scandal especially among concerned parents where children had grown up with it. In our case it happened due to its use on a nearby Air Force base.

Contamination concerns surrounding Air Force and other military sites span far beyond PFAS as well. Disused military sites fall under the purview of the Defense Environmental Recovery Program/Formerly Used Defense Sites (DERP FUDS, what an acronym) administered by the Corps of Engineers, which has a long list of sites (hundreds per state generally) and is not very transparent about the disposition of these sites, with the records usually being shipped to the district ACE headquarters from which they can be difficult to retrieve. The sheer number of sites is also a challenge to effective public oversight.

Active sites generally fall under the purview of an environmental permitting program, so there are dual problems that the level of rigor to which the operation is held varies by the permitting authority (state environment department or EPA depending) and that the military branches in general and it seems Air Force in particular have drug their feet and, in general, gotten away with the least effort possible to satisfy their permit obligations (which are virtually always negotiable with the permitting authority, a negotiating process in which the Air Force holds a large portion of the power).

Other common groundwater contamination concerns around Air Force installations include jet fuel (often leaked from underground tanks and piping and may have gone undetected for decades) and residues of high explosives resulting from munitions testing and disposal. Smaller groundwater plumes may result from photographic processing chemicals and solvents used in cleaning aircraft parts. Generally all of these will be grouped into one or more "operable units" or OUs for administrative purposes and a series of reports issued as the contamination is characterized and a remediation program is designed and implemented. Depending on the regulating agency, these reports may be more or less difficult to find. For DERP FUDS it usually requires a FOIA to the correct USACE HQ wih a lot of followup as they frankly don't seem to have their records in order internally and take a while to find them - the FOIA officers are generally helpful but will keep coming back to you needing more info/clarification as they try to track down the right OU and reports. Fortunately I have never had them ask for a fee, even when their "secure file transfer" solution was broken for months and they had to mail me burned CDs.

Permitting processes and the DERP program both require public information meetings and a (modest) public outreach program. If you live near a military site, pay attention to notices in the newspapers and posted around the community for these meetings, and contact the public information office of the relevant military branch to inquire. The public meetings often include a surprising amount of technical detail on the concern and remediation plans, and because they are also attended by permitting officials represent an opportunity to put some city council meeting-style public pressure on the process.

http://archive.is/HXsuL

So does this mean San Franciscans should avoid drinking tap water?

City of San Francisco is one of the exceptional ones since it secured the best water from Hetch-Hetchy many generations ago, and the worst that is likely to ever happen is bad pipes, and possibly contaminants in the specific areas that saw military use(i.e. Hunter's Point, Treasure Island, Presidio). Other towns in the Bay Area have something bigger to worry about, OTOH, even tech workers at the major SV campuses. The South Bay is dotted with industrial Superfund sites and there are a lot of unknowns about when and where they'll leak out.

You basically need to keep your windows open in SV. That and live up in the hills.

I don’t see why anyone anywhere would risk drinking tap water when filtration systems are relatively cheap.

Get an RO system and a water bottle.

SF water comes from Hetch Hetchy so it's probably ok. I would worry about lead maybe..

> The Air Force delivered free five-gallon jugs of water to the Mendez home for more than two years. In 2018, it paid to have the house connected to the municipal water system. Ruben Mendez said he now pays $100 a month for water he used to get for free.

Sorry, what? 100$ a month for residential water? Either this guy is running a farm operation or something is seriously broken.

Municipalities kept water and sewer rates too low for decades, and now we need to spend $1 trillion over the next 25 years to upgrade systems and catch up with deferred maintenance: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_w...

As incredible as it is, $100 appears to be below average monthly cost nowadays for a 4 person family[0] using 150 gallons / person / day [based on a random study that quick search found].

I am not sure who would use 150 gallons a day though. Even 50 gallons (~189 liters) seems a lot to me. If you factor in irrigation system, etc. then maybe you would get to these gallon volumes.

[0] https://www.circleofblue.org/2018/water-management/pricing/p...

The big consumers are stuff like toilets (~2 gallons/flush), showers (2-3 gallons/minute), and lawn care.

So you have 3 people who take a 10 minute shower, and flush the toilet 4 times each, that's 112 gallons/day right there.

112 gallons a day is not a lot. We have exactly this and our water bill is $25/month in the SF Bay Area. Our SERVICE CHARGE just to have water is about $30/month whether we use water or not.

Lawn care is the most expensive part, that can be hundreds of dollars a month, depending on how much water you use.

When I lived in Vancouver, BC, our house had a flat water rate of $40/month. My parents would use water until the cows came home, would leave the faucet running while walking around the house, etc. When they came to visit here, I made sure they broke themselves of that habit very very quickly.

My town has a floor that's about 100 gallons per day that I'm always under. My bill, with no sewer, is more than $20/month. $100/month for water seems high in that, anecdotally, electrical and oil bills are a much bigger deal for most people than water. OTOH, $100/month doesn't seem out of the realm of reasonableness either.

Meanwhile I pay $630 every six months for water no matter how much or little I use. So $100 a month seems right on to me.

I confess to being a bit surprised but, based on the comments, it certainly seems as if $100/month is within the normal range for water bills, even for light use.

I pay nothing (monthly). But I am rural, and have my own well and septic system. Which cost, if I remember right, $5000 decades ago when built. Which amortizes to maybe $20/month.

Do you test your water for impurities and chemicals?

Sure. But the water is from 111' down, and got there 10,000 years ago. So probably not an issue.

https://kfor.com/2019/09/03/im-just-frustrated-edmond-reside...

Where I live people's bills are going from $100 to over $600 a month. I saw someone's post on Nextdoor saying that their bill was $2700. Ours was $963 up from about $270 with no change in usage. I would be thrilled to pay $100 a month for water.

The person in the article said he was watering his lawn for $40/month previously. The fact that it jumped to $250 while maintaining his watering habits does not garner much sympathy from me. Were it $250 so that he might hydrate his children and maintain a reasonable standard of living, well that's another thing. But just so your grass doesn't go dormant? Here, water your grass with my tears.

In summary, I think some poor examples were chosen.

People's overall quality of life matters, and it's nice to have a lawn...

Also, you realize plant life is an important carbon sink, right? Is watering backyard trees worthy of your spite as well?

>Here, water your grass with my tears.

Perhaps you're on the wrong site, with this sort of attitude.

Putting pipes in the ground is not cheap, and it needs to be paid for. There are also pumps, treatment, and maintenance that needs to be paid for. When you have a dense city that isn't a big deal because your share of the above isn't very expensive. However when you have a sparse rural area your share goes up. In a city public water systems are cheaper than drilling a well, but in rural areas a private well is cheaper - but if the ground water isn't safe to drink the treatment can be out of reach.

In your bigger cities 100 dollars a month is about average or even low for a family. Unless he has almost no use I don't see the issue.

Nobody running a farm is wasting expensive municipal water on irrigation when they have a perfectly functional well on the property. I'm not sure it's even possible to run an economically solvent farming operation off municipal water in the US for any crop other than maybe indoor weed.

Many farms in the US run off a municipal water supply. Only in the west do farms have irrigation systems. When you get east of the Missouri river there is enough rainfall to water the crops and so you don't have any irrigation needs (I don't know why the climate changes so drastically on this line but it does). Even if you have a well, if you are east of the river it is only for household and livestock use, not irrigation.

I live in the midwest and irrigation is definitely used around here. Not for all crops but there has been a huge increase in the usage of irrigation over the past decade. There's usually enough rain but irrigation still helps make yields a lot more consistent.

I live in Sarasota Florida, my water and sewer bill is 100.

Sewer is usually twice the price of water, so 33 water and 66 sewer.

My actual water/gas usage fee is just a few dollars a month, but there's a "base station fee", for what I presume to be infrastructure, that pushes my bill to just over $100 per month.

LOOOL I wish my residential water bill (for a normal sized house and very small yard) wasn't $100+, but it has been for MANY years.

He might be up in the mountains

$25 a month for water in KY

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