The U.S. Navy’s consultants are beginning to test private wells for the emerging contaminant PFAS this week in neighborhoods surrounding the Navy’s former property in Calverton, and they’re urging residents within the testing area to schedule an appointment.
Residents who have private drinking wells in the area are asked to call 1-800-906-9339 to set up the testing, which will be conducted by the Navy’s contractors, Resolution Consultants.
The consultants will ask the owner of the property to sign a Right of Entry Agreement and respond to a questionnaire and an adult will need to be present at the time of the scheduled appointment, said Evan Tam of Resolution Consultants, who helped residents schedule testing at an open house at the Residence Inn in Riverhead Jan. 22.
Mr. Tam said there are about 60 homes in the proposed testing area, which extends south, east and north of the property now known as the Enterprise Park at Calverton (EPCAL). Renters can set up testing as well, he said, as long as they are able to have the owner of the property sign the Right of Entry Agreement.
While Resolution Consultants plans to do most of the testing this coming week, they can also make appointments for later this winter, he said, adding that two professional water samplers will spend less than an hour taking water samples, preferably from a source as close as possible to the well, likely an outdoor spigot. Water testers will follow health and safety precautions requested by residents, such as wearing of masks and gloves.
The water will then be sent to a lab for testing, with results expected within 30 days of the sampling.
Addison Phoenix, the project manager for the Navy’s cleanup of the site, said potential treatment plans for the water will be considered after the testing results are complete, but any resident whose water has more than 70 parts per trillion of PFAS will be provided with bottled water in the interim.
Treatments could include in-house systems or connection to public water, depending on the degree of contamination, she said.
While the Navy has been working on numerous sources of contamination at the site over the past three decades since the property was given to Riverhead Town for economic development, safety standards for PFAS are still being developed.
Until last year, 70 ppt had been considered the national standard for the maximum amount of PFAS allowed in drinking water since 2016, when understanding of the harm caused by the compounds was in its infancy. New York State set a lower standard of 10 ppt in 2020.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set a goal last year of reducing that amount to 4 ppt in public drinking water supplies, while the Department of Defense set a standard of 12 ppt last fall for the most common PFAS chemicals in areas surrounding its historic use of the compounds. There is currently no standard for PFAS in private wells.
The most common historical use of products containing PFAS is in firefighting foam, used to put out fires involving fuels like gasoline and jet fuel. They are commonly found in the groundwater surrounding airports throughout the country, where they had historically been used for firefighting training, and at sites of aircraft crashes and automobile accidents.
After gathering nearly 400 samples from testing wells at the EPCAL property, the Navy has identified 11 likely PFAS release areas, which include fire training areas and sites of crashes that have occurred during the property’s history as a Grumman flight testing site, said Nate Winston, a geologist working on the project for Resolution Consultants. The consultants are prioritizing cleanup of areas that pose the greatest risk to human health and the environment, he added.
Exposure to PFAS has been shown to cause numerous health problems that are still being researched, including increased risk of certain types of cancer, changes in immune system function, impacts on fetal and child development, pregnancy complications and increased risk of thyroid disease and liver damage.
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