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The Department of Defense just announced that it has informed 367 new farms about potential forever chemical contamination in the last year. The farms are located near military bases where PFAS-laden firefighting foam has accumulated in the soil and groundwater after decades of use on military bases. The contaminated groundwater poses a severe exposure risk for people who drink from those wells. It also poses the risk of impacting irrigated farm soil, crops, livestock, and other farm products. Farms near military bases in New Mexico and Colorado have been forced to shut down after discovering the contamination. 

Together with previous DOD disclosures, the new batch of PFAS notifications brings the total up to 4,107 high-risk farms in 29 US States. The worst contaminated groundwater was at a military base in Louisiana, where contamination was an astounding 1.7 million times higher than EPA’s proposed safe drinking water threshold. There are 41 farms within a mile of this base. Defend Our Health’s farmland contamination campaign manager, Adam Nordell, responds: 

“The Department of Defense is doing nothing to assist farms with the impacts of the military’s careless environmental stewardship. These farmers are left with the untenable choice of quietly living and working on toxic ground or losing their livelihoods. We can change this zero-sum equation by providing a federal safety-net for PFAS impacted farming communities. Maine has already shown that we can clean up the food system by helping impacted farms pivot to PFAS-safe production systems. Let’s leverage that success and include the Relief for Farmers Hit with PFAS Act in the 2023 Farm Bill.”