PFAS contamination is likely at Pittsburgh airport. Airports may face legal challenges by doing nothing
By Oliver Morrison | Public Source | August 12, 2019
Read full article by Oliver Morrison (Public Source)
“Reports from former firefighters, airport records, expert scientists and a military study indicate that the Pittsburgh International Airport is likely the source of a PFAS chemical plume. Airport officials say they are doing everything the law requires but declined to say if they are taking additional steps experts say are needed to protect the health of nearby residents.
If the Allegheny County Airport Authority doesn’t investigate the possibility of PFAS contamination released through firefighting foam, some lawyers say it could find itself in legal jeopardy. Airports are not required by law to investigate PFAS contamination. Still, there are more than 75 lawsuits across the country against entities that have discharged the foam containing PFAS, and the number is growing.
Some airport industry officials hope that, because the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] requires airports to use firefighting foam that contains PFAS, the airports won’t be held liable for letting it contaminate their properties. Not every lawyer thinks this argument will hold up, and a lobbying group for the airport industry is pushing Congress to pass a law that will limit their financial exposure. As the legal questions get sorted out, airports across the country are deciding whether and how to respond to the potential health consequences for residents who live nearby.
Interviews with five former firefighters at the Pittsburgh International Airport and airport records indicate that potentially high volumes of toxic chemicals from the foam may have entered the ground and groundwater at the airport. This contamination could have been flushed into local streams and carried into surrounding neighborhoods, contaminating the drinking water in nearby private water wells. The closest public drinking water source is Moon Township, which uses carbon filtration that removes PFAS and tested below the federal health advisory for PFAS in December.
Since the early 1970s, airport firefighters have been using aqueous film forming foam [AFFF] to put out and prevent oil and gas fires, which are potentially more dangerous at airports. Although the firefighters say they didn’t use the foam on many actual fires, the foam was used extensively during equipment testing, fire trainings, fuel spills and accidental discharges…
The airport currently uses a brand of AFFF called Chemguard, which may be less harmful than the kind previously used and was known to contain toxic PFAS. Airport officials didn’t respond to questions about when it switched foams. Although companies like DuPont, a spinoff company called Chemours and 3M have known for decades about the threat of PFAS chemicals, public awareness has grown recently and the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] set its first health advisory for the chemicals in 2009…
Two contamination sites have already been identified in Southwestern Pennsylvania, both of which are military bases that lease their land from Pittsburgh’s airport. The bases began looking for PFAS contamination in 2015 as part of a national effort to survey the extent of the military’s PFAS contamination from firefighting foam and found PFAS in the soil and groundwater exceeding standards at 24 of 31 sites tested. In one spot, the sample was 87 times higher than the EPA’s federal threshold for safe drinking water…
The former Pittsburgh airport firefighters said the contamination may not be contained to only airport property and its surroundings. They described times when AFFF was used on a large restaurant fire on the North Side, along highways in the South Hills and during fire trainings at a North Park facility run by Allegheny County Emergency Services.
The Allegheny County Airport Authority declined at least nine interview requests by email, phone and in person between November and July and didn’t respond to more than 50 written questions that were emailed on June 7. The authority declined a final request to speak about PFAS contamination on Aug. 8…
‘We’ve done everything that we’re required to do, and we’ll continue to do everything that we’re required to do,’ said Christina Cassotis, the chief executive officer of the airport authority, after being asked by a PublicSource reporter about the airport’s PFAS response at a June board meeting. Cassotis said the airport is following all FAA regulations.
The PFAS concern ‘raises some complex legal questions’ because the FAA requires the airport to use AFFF, said Justin Barkowski, vice president of regulatory affairs at the American Association of Airport Executives.
Some airports are not preparing for how to deal with potential contamination as quickly as others, according to Barkowski. He said ‘most’ airports have already begun PFAS testing even though it is not a requirement yet. ‘We haven’t talked with every single airport, but we know that’s generally where airports are at,’ Barkowski said…
Mark Cuker, a Philadelphia lawyer experienced in PFAS cases, said the authority could face legal liability even if it’s doing everything required by law.
‘That’s absolutely not a defense,’ Cuker said. ‘There’s plenty of law that says that a party can be found to be negligent even when they follow the letter of the law. The standard is “reasonable care.” Is it reasonable to do nothing when you know there might be a problem? I don’t think so’…
Once an airport investigates PFAS contamination, it would likely be required to report it to state environmental agencies under ‘reportable discharge laws’ and would then be required to begin remediation relatively soon, according to Marty Judge, an environmental lawyer in New Jersey. There may be a downside to not waiting to address PFAS contamination, he said: remediation technology could get better and cheaper, and state and federal standards could become more stringent, meaning entities may have to duplicate the work…
Although the airport authority says it is following all laws and regulations, there is evidence that its officials know that other airports are doing more to protect the public.
PublicSource learned through a Right-to-Know request that Cassotis received emails from the American Association of Airport Executives in 2018 that included discussion from airports in several other states discussing a switch to a less toxic form of firefighting foam and about how to create better containment areas to prevent AFFF from contaminating the environment…
The Allegheny County Airport Authority did not respond to questions about whether Cassotis read these emails. Barkowski said the issue of PFAS contamination has been a topic at meetings of the American Association of Airport Executives for at least the past few years…
PublicSource released an article in November 2018, indicating that PFAS contamination was confirmed at military bases immediately adjacent to Pittsburgh’s airport. In May, PublicSource published an article describing the extent of the contamination, including the fact that the military believed the contamination could have extended beyond its borders.
And in June and July, PublicSource posed questions to the airport authority about potential contamination and informed officials that five of its former firefighters indicated there is likely a problem. It’s standard procedure to interview firefighters when assessing potential PFAS contamination, a step the military took at the start of its PFAS testing near the airport in 2015.
The airport replied by questioning the quality of PublicSource’s reporting. ‘Is the story going to identify the people making these claims and in what timeframe they are referencing or is this going to be anonymous sources with vague details?’ asked Bob Kerlik, the airport authority’s director of media relations. (Interviews with Scharding and the four other former firefighters are all on the record, and details of their accounts are further explored in this accompanying story.)
Kerlik wrote in a May email to PublicSource that the authority now uses a safe firefighting foam and has implemented procedures that minimize the chances the foam could contaminate the environment. He did not elaborate on past practices or say when the foam change was made.
Other airports across the country are dealing with PFAS contamination from AFFF more proactively. PFAS was found at five airports in Alaska, including in the drinking water at two of them, and the state is providing drinking water alternatives when it is responsible. California is testing for PFAS at 31 airports, in addition to local water supplies, a step that Pennsylvania has not taken. And the Barnstable Municipal Airport on Cape Cod held public meetings in July about its PFAS contamination…
Most airport firefighting units, including at Pittsburgh’s airport, are now using an AFFF made from a shorter PFAS chemical. Some health experts think these chemicals may be safer because they wash out of the body more quickly than the chemicals in the AFFF before 2002.
But it’s not totally clear how safe these new PFAS chemicals are. Carla Ng, a scientist who studies PFAS chemicals at the University of Pittsburgh, said the smaller size of the new PFAS chemicals makes them harder to remove from drinking water…
For the time being, the FAA still requires airport firefighters to carry and test AFFF, although new legislation will end that requirement in 2021. The FAA and EPA did not respond to emails for comment…
A NAS report states that an airport’s long-term finances could be at risk because of PFAS particularly because future construction projects would have to take into account the potential impact of PFAS remediation. The ‘legacy impacts have the potential to significantly affect capital improvement projects should impacts of PFASs be encountered.’
Cuker, the lawyer who works on PFAS cases, said the airport authority is also at risk of being sued by anyone near the airport who drinks contaminated water and develops a disease associated with PFAS contamination.
Private water well owners are particularly vulnerable. ‘You can’t taste this, you can’t smell it but it can kill you and certainly make you sick,’ Cuker said. ‘People should not be drinking it if it’s above [the contamination] level.’
‘Frankly it’s outrageous’ that nearby residents haven’t had their water wells tested, he added.
The Department of Defense has acknowledged that there are at least five water wells within a mile of the two military bases that could be contaminated. But there have been no plans for tests so far. A state database of well sites indicates other residents and businesses with water wells near the airport could also be at risk. And the risk extends to other communities where firefighters may have used AFFF outside of the airport’s property lines…
The airport didn’t respond to questions about whether they were concerned about the potential health impact to nearby residents.
‘Listen, we’re doing everything that’s required by DEP and the EPA and everything that’s required by the FAA,’ Cassotis, the airport authority CEO, said in June. ‘We follow all the rules. We follow all of the rules.'”
This content provided by the PFAS Project.
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