PORTSMOUTH — In May 2014, the city of Portsmouth — working with state and Pease Development Authority officials — announced it had shut down the city’s Haven well after tests showed it was contaminated with per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Then-PDA Executive Director David Mullen said at the time the Haven well — which is located at the former Pease Air Force Base — was shut down in “an abundance of caution.”
Dr. Jose Montero, who was then director of public health at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, said at the time health officials didn't know the health impact — if any — from drinking water containing PFAS.
“There is nothing of evidence in the research literature about the health impact on human health,” Montero said then.
A decade has passed, and PFAS, which are often called forever chemicals, have been found in water supplies throughout the country and around the world. When officials from the federal Environmental Protection Agency set much stricter protective standards for PFAS in April this year, they left no doubt about the danger of the chemicals.
“Exposure to per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has been linked to cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children,” EPA officials stated.
Although most people hadn’t heard of the chemicals 10 years ago, the city worked with a consultant to create a state-of-the art treatment facility to remove PFAS from drinking water.
The facility has been visited by officials from all over the country, Canada and Germany.
Thousands of people — including infants and children who attended two day cares at the Pease International Tradeport — were exposed to high levels of PFAS from the Haven well, which was contaminated by firefighting foam.
'Fear of the unknown' leads to action
That exposure and the potential long-term health impacts caused by PFAS inspired local parents to reach out to the state’s congressional delegation for help.
Andrea Amico, a Portsmouth mother whose children attended a day care at Pease, joined other advocates, city officials and the congressional delegation to successfully fight for action.
Amico said “the fear of the unknown in terms of what the health impacts could be in the future,” when asked what worries her the most.
“My children drank highly contaminated water at very young ages, critical stages of their development,” Amico said during an interview about the 10-year anniversary of the PFAS contamination at Pease.
“It worries me, there could be numerous effects on the health of my family. It’s frankly devastating,” she said.
The Pease community and many others nationwide — often on or near military bases — have been exposed.
Amico fears the potential effects when she “thinks about the levels people have been exposed to for a long time through no fault of their own.”
Life-changing activism
Amico acknowledged she had “no experience working on environmental issues” when she started pushing regulators to act.
Ten years after she learned her young children and husband had been exposed to the Pease contamination, Amico has become a nationally known advocate on the issue.
“I feel really proud of everything that has been accomplished, grateful for all the progress that’s been made and all the help we’ve gotten from the community and the congressional delegation,” Amico said. “This work has been life-changing for me. I feel like I’ve evolved as a person. It’s been an incredible 10 years.”
Because of her advocacy, Amico has testified in front of the U.S. Senate twice, attended the State of the Union address in 2019 with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, and received an EPA Community Excellence Award.
She also helped create the National PFAS Contamination Coalition in 2017 and the Testing For Pease website and group to successfully push for blood testing for people exposed to PFAS.
Amico joined with two other local mothers, Alayna Davis and Michelle Dalton, to form Testing For Pease. The three were often referred to by Shaheen and others as “the Pease moms.”
Amico's three children are now 7, 10 and 13.
“Now that they’re older, we’ve been able to talk to them more about it, and they’re very well aware of the issue,” Amico said. “They’re very supportive of the work that I do.”
Amico said she “was elated” by the EPA’s recent actions on PFAS, and officials' statements about the dangers the chemicals pose.
“There’s no safe level of those chemicals. They validated that these chemicals are harmful,” she said about the EPA.
How Portsmouth created treatment plant that set example
Brian Goetz is Portsmouth’s deputy director of public works and oversees the city’s water division.
During a recent interview, he recalled getting a call on May 12, 2014, from the state telling him to turn off the Haven well — the largest of the three city-owned wells at Pease Tradeport.
The call came from a state official who told him “the well was over the advisory level” for PFAS, Goetz said.
Despite his years in the water industry, Goetz said he had heard little about the forever chemicals.
“I had some sleepless nights,” Goetz acknowledged at the start of the contamination.
But in retrospect, it was fortunate officials knew where the PFAS contamination came from, firefighting foam that was used to put out a fire on a nearby runway at the former Pease Air Force Base in the 1990s, Goetz said.
“Because it was very evident … as to what the root cause of this was, the Air Force was very cooperative and paid for everything,” Goetz said during an interview at the city’s PFAS treatment facility off Grafton Road at Pease.The city reached an agreement with the Air Force to pay for the city to work with Weston & Sampson to design and construct the treatment center to remove PFAS from all three wells at Pease, Goetz said.
“It was about $11 million for the construction, and $2 million for the engineering,” he said. “We continue to be reimbursed by the Air Force for the cost of operations.”
That includes replacing the giant carbon and resin filters that are part of the system that has reduced the regulated PFAS chemicals to non-detect, Goetz said.
Blake Martin of Weston & Sampson said the city worked with the company to create the new treatment system for PFAS.
The pilot they conducted involved using a combination of carbon and resin filters, a change from the past when it was thought only carbon was effective on PFAS, he said.
“The pilot led to the final design, which is a multiple-filter system,” Martin said.
EPA officials in April announced federally enforceable drinking water standards for PFAS. EPA finalized the legally enforceable levels, called Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs), for five individual PFAS, including the most frequently found PFOA and PFOS, the agency said.
The new rule sets health safeguards and will require public water systems to monitor and reduce the levels of PFAS if they’re over the new levels, according to the EPA.
EPA is setting enforceable MCLs at 4 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS, individually.
For PFNA and PFHxS, EPA is setting the MCLs at 10 parts per trillion.
To put that in context, the EPA’s health advisory level in 2014 for PFOA and PFOS was 400 parts per trillion.
But as Martin noted, EPA’s new standards “won’t affect this plant at all, the treatment is so robust.”
Millions in treatment costs?
But it may have a profound impact on other communities who have to pay for treatment on their own, he acknowledged.
When asked if it could cost communities who exceed the standards millions of dollars, Martin replied, “That’s absolutely true.”
Because of the work the city has already done, “they are way ahead of other communities,” Martin said.
Portsmouth may have more work to do, too
The city likely will have to create new treatment systems for other city-owned wells because of the new standards, Goetz said.
That could include the Greenland well and the Portsmouth and Collins wells, he said, which at times have been slightly over the new PFAS levels.
Goetz predicted the cost for treatment facilities and operations will continue to increase as more communities test over the tougher EPA standards.
“The cost of construction alone for this plant was about $11 million, it would probably be $15 to $20 million today,” he said.
The facility began operating in 2021.
“The costs are going to keep going up as more and more places have to do this, the prices are going to really escalate,” he said. “Plus, there’s not enough engineers, there’s not enough contractors, there’s not enough builders at the moment.”
Sen. Shaheen says fight against PFAS started with local parents
Sen. Shaheen had not heard about PFAS chemicals when her office first started receiving calls in 2014 about the issue, she said in a recent interview.
Her office heard from parents who were concerned that their children had been exposed to the chemicals by drinking water at the Pease day cares, she said.
“That’s how we got involved,” Shaheen said.
She called it a “great example of individual citizens” like Amico “making a difference” in their community.
Amico praised the work of the delegation during the past decade, but particularly credited Shaheen, who spearheaded the legislation to create the first national PFAS health study, with a pilot study at Pease .
Shaheen also advocated for and received millions in federal funding to bankroll the study.
“I don’t know where we’d be without Senator Shaheen,” Amico said.
The contamination that started at Pease ended up “turning into an issue nationwide,” Shaheen said.
“Portsmouth and the Seacoast and New Hampshire have really been at the forefront of addressing this issue,” she added.
She believes the health study that started at Pease is “going to be a definitive study to show what the health impacts of PFAS are.”
Ongoing issues with PFAS, according to Shaheen, include “thinking about how we prevent it, how to clean it up and how do we help people with private wells.”
Stefany Shaheen, daughter of the senator, served on Portsmouth’s City Council when the news of the PFAS contamination hit.
“I don’t think we could have fully appreciated the scope of the challenge of PFAS and what it’s become,” she said in a recent interview. “But we knew we had to address it immediately.”
She stressed the importance of the role “people like Andrea Amico and the Pease moms played” in the issue.
“They helped make it very clear to people like me on the council what needed to be done, and they kept us informed,” she said.
Stefany Shaheen and others on the council successfully pushed the state to allow blood tests for anyone who had been exposed, after state officials first planned to limit the number of tests.
“I think for people to have that kind of information made a big difference,” she said.
Stefany Shaheen came away from her time on the City Council realizing the importance of safe water.
“I think one of the realities that climate change has reinforced for communities across the country is how finite and precious water is as a resource,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Parents worry about 'unknown' health effects 10 years after PFAS shut down Pease well
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