‘A big PFAS issue in this area.’ How Hyannis airport walls PFAS from Cape drinking water
Cape Cod Times
Walker Armstrong
August 9, 2023
Representatives of Cape Cod Gateway Airport told local residents that they are doing all they can to halt the spread of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, coming from its property and threatening a source of drinking water.
PFAS, called “forever chemicals” because they stay in the environment, were the subject of a public meeting Monday at Barnstable Town Hall.
For many residents, groundwater is their primary concern, since a known PFAS plume has sunk into the soil on airport property, into the groundwater and has drifted into the path of a water well within the Maher Filtration Plant system, which provides areas in Hyannis with drinking water.
One resident raised her hand during the presentation and asked if the water is safe to drink.
“Yes,” said Bryan Massa, the evening’s presenter from Horsley Witten Group, the environmental consultant at the helm of the airport’s cleanup efforts. “The town has an expansive drinking water filtration system that provides drinking water that meets the state’s regulatory limit, it’s providing safe drinking water for the town.”
The airport has identified a plume that is traveling southeast from the southeast portion of its property, underneath Yarmouth Road, and has entered into the town of Yarmouth’s municipal boundary just north of Main Street.
Firefighting foam is one source of PFAS
While a known PFAS plume has been identified as originating from the airport itself — largely due to the use of a commonplace fire extinguishing foam — Massa said in his presentation that the company has identified plumes from several other sources.
Some, like the plume issuing from the Barnstable County Fire Training Academy, are a known source of PFAS contamination. Others, Massa said, are still unknown.
“The airport’s plume goes maybe 30 to 40 feet into the groundwater, and it’s getting pulled up by the Maher wells,” Massa said. “But there’s impacts 100 feet deep that originate even before the airport. Meaning, there’s a big PFAS issue in this area.”
The airport’s cleanup efforts involve installing caps between contaminated soil and groundwater
The caps are thick, PFAS-free plastic tarps that prevent groundwater from infiltrating into the contaminated soil — on and around the areas where the airport’s plume has been identified.
“The airport basically cut off the plume by capping the source, they capped the two PFAS source areas so there’s no continued leaching,” Massa said.
Massa said the airport is legally responsible for dealing with its “relatively small” plume. The PFAS plumes coming from other sources, like the Fire Training Academy, are the responsibility of others.
“The airport’s plume and another plume (are) stacked on top of each other, and then there’s other intermixed plumes,” Massa said. “The airport’s plume is sitting on top of a much larger plume.”
No legally enforceable limits for PFAS regulation
There are currently no legally enforceable limits for regulating PFAS in drinking water, despite the risks to human and animal health. Massa said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “is still in the process of making PFOA and PFOS a hazardous substance.”
The EPA covers two common types of PFAS — perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS). The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, on the other hand, identifies six common types for its drinking water standard.
PFAS firefighting foam is still in use – though in a limited way
Katie Servis, airport general manager, said in an interview with the Times that the firefighting foams containing PFAS are currently required by the Federal Aviation Administration. As such, they were required to perform annual training drills — which they have since stopped — where they sprayed the foam.
“Since about 2014, the airport has been responding to PFAS,” Servis said. “And since 2015, we ceased the types of operations that we were doing that were contributing to PFAS being put on the ground.”
Currently, the FAA has no alternatives in terms of PFAS-free solutions for fire retardants. Massa said the airport has only had to use those foams twice for aircraft emergencies — in 1981 and 2016.
“Even PFAS-free foams have PFAS in them,” Massa said.
Residents offer their thoughts on airport’s presentation
In the meeting, several residents from the towns of Barnstable and Yarmouth spoke and asked questions.
Paul Phalan, a resident of Centerville, said in an interview with the Times he was “suspicious” the Horsley Witten Group could be biased in favor of the airport since they are working together to offset the spread of PFAS issuing from their property.
“This company … they are on the airport’s payroll, so they’re going to work with the airport to correct this. As opposed to us, the public, if we were paying someone, they would work for us and maybe tell us something different,” Phalan said.
Also on hand was Yarmouth Town Administrator Robert Whritenour, who said during the meeting that Yarmouth is dealing with an “ecological harm” as a result of the PFAS plumes originating from the airport and other sources. He said there is no direct threat to Yarmouth’s drinking water.
“All of us feel, especially on the Yarmouth side, with so many plumes coming down from that same direction, it is in no way comforting to know that the airport feels their plume is not the biggest,” Whritenour said.
Linda Bolliger, a resident of Yarmouth and president of the Hyannis Park Civic Association, said in an interview with the Times that water is “a way of life” on the Cape. She said the fact that so much of the water surrounding their neighborhood is potentially contaminated or contaminated is impacting that way of life “indefinitely.”
“We don’t know when or if this will, in our lifetime, ever change,” Bolliger said, referring to PFAS contamination in the surrounding area. “I mean, the technology has to be there to change it, and it’s not there to change it yet.”