The Air Force told the Dayton Daily News in June that it has spent nearly $59 million to identify and mitigate PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals that are sometimes called “forever chemicals,” due to how hard they are to mitigate.
Wright-Patterson is one of 191 Air Force installations where the release of PFAS has been confirmed, the service said.
In a statement sent in response to questions from this newspaper, a spokesman for the Air Force Civil Engineer Center said the survey is open to any residents who want to share input. The Air Force will take responses until Sept. 30.
Behind the survey is a community improvement plan, also known as a “CIP,” or a plan for informing and involving the community in a clean-up process, said the spokesman, Mark Kinkade.
“The CIP enables DoD (Department of Defense) installations to address community needs, concerns, and expectations, (and) serves as a site-specific strategy for the project team’s outreach activities during the cleanup process to inform and engage community members,” Kinkade said.
Such plans are common at military installations that have environmental restoration work to do, he added.
A national contingency plan — the federal government’s blueprint for responding to oil spills and hazardous substance releases — requires agencies like the Air Force to “prepare community involvement plans based on community interviews and other relevant information,” he said.
“The plan will include information about restoration sites and clean-up efforts, key demographics about the community, and an assessment of community information needs, concerns and expectations,” Kinkade also said.
Through the Environmental Protection Agency Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (also known as the “Superfund” process), 26 AFFF (aqueous film-forming foam) release sites have been investigated at Wright-Patterson, Kinkade told this news outlet in June.
Base representatives have said Wright-Patterson firefighters no longer use the foam.
Two of the survey’s 30 questions are: “Do you feel that the Air Force offers the public sufficient opportunities to become involved with the installation restoration program?” and “How confident are you that the Air Force will continue to take all the necessary response actions to protect human health and the environment in the future at WPAFB?”
“Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is committed to continual efforts to ensure human health and a safe environment,” the base says on the survey page. “The Air Force considers the active, meaningful involvement of community members as essential to the success of this project.”
In the spring of 2021, the city of Dayton said it had no choice but to sue Wright-Patterson and the Department of Defense over the presence of PFAS chemicals.
Wright-Patt and DoD officials denied the city’s contentions, saying they had adhered to federal guidelines. Representatives of both the city and the base have insisted over the years that the city’s drinking water supply has been safe.
By 2023, the city of Dayton’s $300 million lawsuit against Wright-Patterson was stalled in legal limbo, blended with thousands of similar lawsuits under a single federal court master docket.
The survey can be found here.
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