Greco spent 30 years in active service specializing in strategic intelligence, nuclear weapons and arms control. Former chair of the South Burlington City Council and an active Unitarian Universalist. Greco has been fighting the basing of F-35s in Vermont for ten years.
~ Omar Poler ~
Poler lives in the Eken Park neighborhood of Madison and has been organizing with his neighbors to stop the F-35 “beddown” and protect water from PFAS contamination. He is a leader of Eken Park Resistance.
~ Terra Huey ~
Huey is the social media coordinator for the Sound Defense Alliance, a coalition of groups in Northwest Washington and the Salish Sea. SDA is recognized for getting Real-Time Noise Monitoring into the National Defense Authorization Act, passed last year by Congress.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has begun to draft rules to establish state PFAS standards for drinking water. Data, scientific evidence and community testimony around PFAS raises the alarm for strong and immediate action on proposed rules for drinking water and surface water standards. Our groundwater, Starkweather Creek, the Yahara chain of lakes and our fish in and around Madison are already contaminated with PFAS thousands of times the anticipated water standard.
WE ARE ASKING THAT YOU WRITE DNR STAFF AND SUPPORT THE ADOPTION OF NEW PFAS DRINKING WATER STANDARDS.
Background In order to establish standards for PFAS, the DNR will need to revise the NR 809 regulations, the Safe Drinking Water Standard. The DNR already held a public meeting on December 1st. Many state citizens commented during this virtual meeting. They said:
Six of twelve wells in Eau Claire were closed due to high levels of PFAS, chemicals used in many products including food wrappers, stain-resistant sprays and aqueous film forming foam (AFFF). PFAS contamination in Madison is largely due to decades of fire-fighting training at Truax Field using foam containing PFAS.
An OB/GYN physician presented evidence that PFAS and PFOA, lipophilic substances, are not only found but concentrated in breast milk. She called it “alarming.” Other documented adverse health effects of PFAS in drinking water include decreased response of antibodies to vaccines, low birth weight, testicular cancer and thyroid cancer.
A resident of Marinette called for amending NR 809, “to prevent the slow poisoning of the people of Wisconsin from municipal water systems.”
The next step in the rulemaking timeline is the DNR Board meeting on January 25-26, 2022, where they will consider adoption of the rule.
We know the poison is here. The decision makers play a shell game and shelter the government and corporate manufacturers.
I wish the elected and appointed would speak truth, damn it. Instead, the corporate mainstream news sources and the politicians with any real power act as a filter most of the time to serve corporate government owners.
I’m no expert, but I believe that if Truax is a polluted SuperFund site that they should not be allowed to stir up the pollution with their construction projects. It seems as though government, especially federal, is above the laws and justice is ignored. They are building a new terminal now and getting ready for more weapons of war [-crimes.]
That is not how republic and representative government works. In the end, I guess, we get what we allow.
We also allow the rights of human beings around the world to be violated to serve the profits of the connected and powerful.
1) “Michael Regan, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said his agency is taking a series of actions to limit pollution from a cluster of long-lasting chemicals known as PFAS that are increasingly turning up in public drinking water systems, private wells and even food.
The Defense Department said it is moving to assess and clean up PFAS-contaminated sites throughout the country, while the Food and Drug Administration will expand testing of the food supply to estimate Americans’ exposure to PFAS from food. The plan is intended to restrict PFAS from being released into the environment, accelerate cleanup of PFAS-contaminated sites such as military bases and increase investments in research to learn more about where PFAS are found and how their spread can be prevented.”
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of man-made chemicals that includes PFOA, PFOS, GenX, and many other chemicals. There is evidence that exposure to PFAS can lead to adverse human health effects. https://www.safeskiescleanwaterwi.org/pfas/
“Despite testing that found “forever chemicals” at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport two years ago, the Department of Defense has yet to move forward with a plan to address the contamination, putting nearby residents with private drinking wells at risk.
The Department of Defense was notified by the state Department of Natural Resources that it was the responsible party for contamination from PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — in ground and surface water near the airport in 2019, but no action has yet been taken, according to a new report by the Environmental Working Group.
The environmental advocacy group looked at publicly available data related to PFAS testing at DOD sites across the Great Lakes region and found that several sites, including Mitchell Airport, could be contaminating not only groundwater but the lakes that give the area its name.
Some of the highest levels of the chemicals were found in private drinking wells along the borders of the Milwaukee airport, said Jared Hayes, a policy analyst with the Environmental Working Group. And because no aggressive action has been taken since the discovery of the compounds, some residents in the area may not even know they’re at risk.
The department ordered that the airport needed to determine the source of the contamination, prevent future discharges and develop a cleanup plan. At the time, levels were not high enough to be considered a public health concern, but the department wanted the water utility to monitor levels.
Included in the testing results in 2019 were about six compounds, including PFOA and PFOS, two of the most researched PFAS chemicals.
Though recommendations at the time called for wastewater utilities to start measuring for PFAS, no such rules have yet been instituted, because the utilities are not the source of chemicals but merely a receiver as the chemicals are washed down drains across the state.
Milwaukee isn’t the only city to face a PFAS contamination stemming from its airport. In Madison, contamination stemming from the Dane County Regional Airport — where the 115th Fighter Wing of the Wisconsin Air National Guard is stationed — has been linked to high levels of PFAS in a nearby lake and some nearby wells.
On French Island, which is home to the La Crosse Regional Airport on one side and the Town of Campbell on the other, over a thousand people are receiving bottled water after PFAS were found in private drinking water across the island. Research into the airport’s past has shown that ongoing testing of PFAS-containing firefighting foam and foam used to put out blazes caused by plane crashes are likely responsible for most of the contamination.
PFAS are a family of man-made chemicals used for their water- and stain-resistant qualities in products like clothing and carpet, nonstick cookware, packaging and firefighting foam. The family includes 5,000 compounds, which are persistent, remaining both in the environment and the human body over time.
