Maine
Maine officials trying to hide scale of ex-navy base PFAS spill, advocates suspect
A former US navy base in Maine has caused among the largest accidental spills of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” ever recorded in the nation, and public health advocates suspect state officials are attempting to cover up its scale by reporting misleading and incomplete data.
Meanwhile, state and regional officials were slow to alert the public and are resisting calls to immediately test some private drinking water wells in the area despite its notoriously complex hydrology, which could potentially spread the contamination widely.
The spill was caused by a malfunctioning fire suppression system in a hangar at the Brunswick naval air station near Maine’s coast, which released about 51,000 gallons of PFAS-laden firefighting foam into nearby surface water, leading to astronomical levels of PFAS contamination.
The levels in the foam reached as much as 4.3bn parts per trillion (ppt) – the drinking water limit for some PFAS compounds is 4ppt.
The government’s communication has been “unconscionable” and the data reporting was “problematic”, said Sarah Woodbury, director of Defend Our Health, a Maine-based non-profit that works on PFAS issues.
“Causing confusion like that, however unintentional it was, just increases the distrust that people have when it comes to government dealing with catastrophes like this,” she said.
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.
The 19 August spill sent toxic firefighting foam into storm drains and floating through the air in a nearby residential and business area. It occurred at the Brunswick executive airport, which is part of the former naval base that was listed decades ago as a Superfund site, a federal designation for the nation’s most polluted areas.
The base, which is now under civilian control and being redeveloped, has long polluted the local environment with a range of toxins, and several other smaller PFAS spills have occurred.
PFAS has been a main ingredient in firefighting foam because it is effective at extinguishing jet fuel fires, and is a main source of PFAS water pollution nationwide. Water at and around more than 720 military sites has been found to be contaminated with PFAS, though not at levels seen near the spill.
In the week after the spill, the Maine department of environmental protection, which is leading the cleanup, issued “do not eat” advisories for fish and began testing local ponds and waterways.
A 26 August progress report listed a reading for PFOS, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds, as 3,230 parts per million (ppm).
Typically, PFAS levels are reported in ppt, which would mean the PFOS levels were about 3.2bn ppt. The 3,230ppm figure appears smaller than the staggering 3.2bn ppt figure. Similarly, the state reported water levels at 700ppt as 0.0007ppm.
It is unusual for PFAS water levels to be reported in ppm, said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst with the Environmental Working Group non-profit, which tracks PFAS pollution. The lab reported the results in ng/l, which is the same as ppt, but the state still changed the unit of measurement to ppm, raising suspicion and frustration among residents and public health advocates.
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In a statement to the Guardian, the state said it made the change for “ease of readability”.
Meanwhile, Maine only reported the number for PFOS, but it had also tested for 13 other PFAS compounds that tallied 1.1bn ppt. That included 64m ppt of PFOA, one of the most common and dangerous PFAS compounds.
The agency said it only disclosed the PFOS results because that showed the highest figure and was the primary chemical of concern.
The state said it would test a limited number of nearby wells, and would check more if needed. Woodbury said public health advocates were also urging the state to provide bottled water until the results are available in several weeks, and calling on it to do soil testing in the most affected areas.
The spill comes amid a military effort to switch to PFAS-free firefighting foam and dispose of the old, PFAS-laden product by October 2025, though it will probably not meet the deadline, Hayes said.
The foam was slated to be removed in October, and additional hangars still hold foam. It is unclear when that foam will be removed, and the situation highlights that “the [Department of Defense] needs to start acting swiftly to remove this from bases across the US”, Hayes said.
“The fact that this happens here means it can probably happen somewhere else, and with so much legacy foam out there it’s hard to say when or where it will happen next,” he added.
ROCKLAND, Maine (WABI) – On Thursday morning, the Maine Department of Transportation and Maine State Ferry Service commissioned a new vessel, the Charles Norman Shay.
”This ferry will serve the most remote community that the Maine State Ferry Service handles, Matinicus Isle. It’s more than two hours and 23 miles between Rockland and Matinicus. A handful of year-round residents there are certainly hardy and resilient. The Charles Norman Shay will be the primary vessel serving Matinicus and its namesake, Charles Norman Shay, is himself hardy,” said Bruce Van Note, the commissioner of the Maine Department of Transportation.
Shay is a Native American veteran who served as a medic on D-Day and would later serve during the Korean War.
He turned 100 years old in June.
”It feels fitting that Charles’s legacy of service, selflessness and dignified accomplishments became commemorated through the naming of the Matinicus ferry for him. Traversing ancestral waters to a place where Penobscot people’s presence has existed since time and memorial,” said Maria Girouard of the Penobscot Nation Tribal Council.
Shay grew up on Indian Island and now lives in France.
The sacrifices Shay made and the life he’s lived will continue to live on in the memory of generations to come.
”It’s our sincere hope that when people ride this ferry, they just pause every so often when they look at the namesake and you just know what a special person it’s named for,” Van Note said.
“Say the name, because they’ll never be forgotten. They’ll always live on if you just say the name out loud. Well, we can read the name every day, all day, anytime we want now,” said Dawn Kelly, a niece of Charles Shay.
Copyright 2024 WABI. All rights reserved.
On Thursday, the Maine Celtics named Tyler Lashbrook their tenth head coach in franchise history.
“It’s an exciting time to be in the G League for both players and coaches,” said Lashbrook via the Maine Celtics. “There’s truly no better development opportunity in the world. I’m beyond thrilled for this opportunity to coach the Maine Celtics. I want to thank Joe Mazzulla, Brad Stevens, and the Boston Celtics organization for trusting me and giving me my first head coaching opportunity. I’m honored and grateful to step into this role.”
Before joining the defending NBA champions prior to last season as a player development coach, Lashbrook worked in the same capacity with the Philadelphia 76ers from 2018-2023. He started his coaching career as a basketball operations intern and video coordinator with them from 2014-2018.
Lashbrook fills the void left by the departure of Blaine Mueller, who helped lead Maine to its first G League Finals appearance last season.
Mueller joined Charles Lee’s coaching staff with the Hornets. The latter was Joe Mazzulla’s lead assistant in Boston last season before getting his long-deserved opportunity to become an NBA bench boss for the first time.
The Maine Celtics also announced their entire coaching staff for the upcoming campaign.
Steve Tchiengang, now elevated to associate head coach, returns to Maine for a second season. Assistant coach Taaj Ridley is also back for a second season. External additions Landon Tatum, a former Washington Wizards player development lead who had been with the franchise since 2016, and Brendan Baker are joining them.
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An internet entrepreneur and a SpaceX engineer have become the first private astronauts to walk in space.
Jared Isaacman, who has amassed a fortune through his online payment company Shift4, paid for the mission, known as Polaris Dawn. Just before 7 a.m. ET, Isaacman pulled open the hatch and floated outside.
He spent about 10 minutes outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule looking down on Earth. A few minutes later, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis stepped outside for a similar amount of time.
The mission’s two other astronauts, Scott Poteet, a former Air Force pilot who works for Isaacman, and SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, remained inside the capsule to support the Isaacman and Gillis.
But because the capsule had no air inside, they too were technically spacewalking, making this the largest number of astronauts to ever spacewalk simultaneously, according to the company. The entire spacewalk was livestreamed by SpaceX.
Until now, walking in space was the sole purview of professional astronauts. Spacewalks are regularly conducted outside the International Space Station, for example, to perform essential maintenance and run experiments. Those spacewalks can last several hours and usually follow a grueling schedule that allows minimal time for enjoying the view.
In many ways, today’s spacewalk is a throwback to the earliest days of the space program. SpaceX’s new spacesuits look modern, but they don’t have self-contained life support. The astronauts receive oxygen through umbilicals, similar to the spacewalks of the Gemini missions in the 1960s.
Isaacman and Gillis didn’t go far. They got about three-quarters of the way out of the hatch and held onto a special set of rails that SpaceX has dubbed the Skywalker. While outside, they conducted several tests of the SpaceX spacesuits to determine their mobility. The suits seemed to rate a middling “3” in most regards (it was unclear whether the rating scale was 1 to 5 or 1 to 10).
Still, the mission is a huge success for SpaceX. Spacewalks are one of the riskiest parts of space travel. Spacesuits are essentially tiny spacecraft. They must provide life support and temperature control to the astronauts, who are exposed to huge temperature swings in the vacuum of space. Problems on spacewalks are not uncommon, and they can be serious — in 2013, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned in space, after water from his suit’s cooling system leaked into his helmet.
SpaceX hopes its new suits can be used one day by astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars.
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