JBCC Pollution Could Delay Regional Wastewater Plan
The Enterprise Sandwich
Tao Woolfe
July 21, 2023
Newly discovered groundwater pollution at Joint Base Cape Cod could delay plans to share the military base’s wastewater treatment facility as a regional solution.
New plumes of forever chemicals, formally known as PFAS (Per- and Polyfluorinated Substances) have been discovered on the military base. The new pollution—believed to have been caused by firefighting foams—is in addition to the historic plumes of contaminants that JBCC—a superfund site—has been cleaning up for many years.
State and federal environmental agencies have expressed “concern with the comingling of waste streams between military and municipal sources, and suggested that there are potential significant liability issues associated with comingling/shared use of any portion of the existing wastewater system,” Wright-Pierce, Sandwich’s wastewater consultant, said in a report to the selectmen.
The Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection are investigating. The investigation, and the anticipated remediation could take several years, Wright-Pierce said in its report.
The report was to have been delivered to the Sandwich Board of Selectmen last week, but the meeting was canceled after a power outage to the area darkened town hall.
The meeting, which has not yet been rescheduled, was to have been a workshop on where the town stands in its quest to map out future wastewater plans.
“It is unclear at this time how the presence of PFAS would impact the shared use of the existing wastewater system,” Wright-Pierce concluded.
“Any redevelopment of the facility would need to be designed, constructed, and operated to prevent creating further risks to human health and the environment from the contamination,” Anni Laughlin, a US EPA supervisor of federal facilities, wrote in an email to Wright-Pierce on June 26.
Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association To Preserve Cape Cod, said the environmental group will be keeping a close eye on the situation.
“The presence of PFAS from base-related activity presents a serious threat to the water supplies of the surrounding communities,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “The DEP letter makes plain that the military’s proposed clean-up response is inadequate and not sufficiently protective of drinking water supplies.
“When you consider the large PFAS load on the base identified in the recent Harvard study, and the failure of the base to embrace its responsibilities, it makes it all the more critical to protect the water supply from the proposed machine gun range.”
Mr. Gottlieb was referring to a 2021 Harvard study about a new testing method for PFAS that showed large quantities of the chemicals in six Cape Cod watersheds.
It showed that not only do full-blown PFAS concentrations show up in groundwater sites, but PFAS precursors can also be found. The new testing method finds these precursors, which “can be transformed through biological or environmental processes into terminal forms,” the study says.
Town Manager George H. (Bud) Dunham said in a telephone interview this week that although the PFAS report about the base is concerning, he still believes the military base will ultimately provide the best and least expensive long-term solution for Sandwich.
“Even if it means, in the meantime, we build a small treatment facility in the industrial park,” Mr. Dunham said.
Sandwich and other towns including Bourne and Barnstable have expressed interest in sending their sewage to the base for treatment and disposal, but with the understanding that JBCC must expand its existing treatment facility capacity to at least four million gallons a day, Mr. Dunham has said.
The towns are under pressure from the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental watchdog law firm, to come up with solutions for cleaning up pollution in ponds, lakes and bays or face lawsuits.
Sandwich has said for many years that if the military base option falls through, the town would likely be looking to build its own facility on Jan Sebastian Drive.
The Air Force, which owned the base’s treatment facility, turned the plant over to the state last year. Converge Strategies, LLC, was selected to operate the plant on the base, but the transfer of the property to Converge has been delayed.
A letter sent last month to the Air Force by the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the latest PFAS plume covers some 6,000 acres. The cleanup will require at least 60 extraction wells and will cost about $200 million to remedy.
Surface water on Johns and Ashumet ponds were tested and found to have PFAS concentrations far higher than the allowable contaminant levels, the letter said. The Cape Cod Aquifer has also been affected, the letter said.
When the wastewater workshop is rescheduled, discussions about installing the town’s sewer lines and cleaning up the ponds and lakes are expected topics. The topics may also include the costs of adding a treatment facility to the industrial park.