Pentagon Pushed for Weakened Regulations on Toxic Chemicals, Endangering Drinking Water of Millions of Americans

Lobbying from the Pentagon is to blame for the Trump administration’s latest environmental regulatory rollback, according to reports.

The EPA on Thursday released weakened guidelines for the clean-up of toxic groundwater pollution which could contaminate the drinking water millions of Americans use—after the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) called on the White House to intervene and have an earlier draft of the rules changed.

“It’s darkly ironic that on the five-year anniversary of the Flint water crisis, instead of taking action to improve our drinking water, Trump’s EPA doubled down on its commitment to gut water protections,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, in a statement. “Despite the agency’s ongoing spin to the contrary, it seems hell-bent on giving industrial and military polluters a pass despite the clear and present danger these chemicals represent for our health.”

The guidelines apply to per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are used heavily by the Pentagon in foams for fighting fires at military bases, as well as by companies that use them in a number of household products. The Pentagon has pushed in recent weeks to make sure it won’t have to quickly remove potential contamination from hundreds of sites across the country, citing costs. The department recently proposed a $750 billion budget.

The new rules will allow military bases to take years to clean up PFAS contamination, eliminating from the draft a section that had called for the prompt removal of “immediate threats posed by hazardous waste sites.”

“EPA’s actions against clean drinking water must be met with commensurate action from our lawmakers to safeguard it…We urgently need action to protect clean water, not more deregulation.” —Wenonah Hauter, Food and Water WatchThe original proposal also included a rule that a PFAS level of 400 parts per trillion in groundwater would require immediate removal of the threat by excavating the polluted soil or fencing off the affected area. That recommendation was erased from the new draft.

The new guidelines call for longer-term clean-up efforts when drinking water has been contaminated with at least 70 parts per trillion of PFAS—a threshold that scientists and federal regulators have acknowledged is “far too high to protect public health,” according to Environmental Working Group (EWG).

“It is a Band-Aid, at best, that does essentially nothing to help the hundreds—perhaps thousands—of communities, in almost every state, with contaminated tap water,” David Andrews, a senior scientist at EWG, said in a statement. “Americans need real and swift action to address this crisis, not more toothless proposals from the Trump administration.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls PFAS contamination “one of the most seminal public health challenges” facing the U.S.  The military says it has inadvertently released the chemicals at 401 military bases across the country, contaminating drinking water in some cases. The chemicals have been linked to diseases including kidney cancer, testicular cancer, and thyroid disease.

One local official in Oscoda, Michigan—where an Air Force base was formerly located and where PFAS contamination has been found—denounced the Pentagon for putting its weight behind an effort to weaken the rules, despite knowingly endangering people who live near many of the country’s military bases.