Gazette.com
On June 24th, the U.S Air Force was urged by two Colorado senators to address PFAS in El Paso County water. In a letter, U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper said is in the Widefield aquifer, which provides drinking water to thousands of residents and supplies surface water to area ponds, some of which Coloradans use for recreational fishing. They are asking the Air Force to expand on a pilot programs that remove PFAS from water. They also requested the Biden administration to partner with Colorado in taking additional steps to address PFAS from military activities.
PFAS in the Widefield aquifer south of Peterson Air Force Base affected some 80,000 people in the Security-Widefield-Fountain area. $50 million in funding for Air Force environmental restoration and remediation has been spent primarily on protecting drinking water for the affected communities since the discovery back in 2016. In Colorado, the Fountain-Widefield-Security area is one of the state’s biggest PFAS sites due to the long-term use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam at Peterson Air Force (now Space Force) Base beginning in the 1970s. Water and soil testing in 2016 by the Air Force revealed PFAS levels of 240,000 parts per trillion in soil samples and more than 88,000 parts per trillion in groundwater at seven locations on the base. The base is now a designated EPA Superfund site.