Cleaning up the past

Sullivan County International Airport and its hazardous waste problem

By ANNEMARIE SCHUETZ
Posted 9/23/20

SWAN LAKE, NY — Amid recent discussions about reasons why the Sullivan County Airport wasn’t up for sale, nobody mentioned PFAS.

However, Linda Reik, a board member with the Sullivan …

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Cleaning up the past

Sullivan County International Airport and its hazardous waste problem

Posted

SWAN LAKE, NY — Amid recent discussions about reasons why the Sullivan County Airport wasn’t up for sale, nobody mentioned PFAS.

However, Linda Reik, a board member with the Sullivan Alliance for Sustainable Development, pointed it out at last Thursday’s September 17 full legislature meeting.

The airport appears on New York’s DEC Environmental Site Remediation database, along with Grossinger’s, the Concord, various landfills and a lead mine. It’s listed as a Class 2, which means that “the disposal of hazardous waste has been confirmed and the presence of such hazardous waste or its components or breakdown products represents a significant threat to public health or the environment: or hazardous waste disposal has not been confirmed, but the site has been listed on the Federal National Priorities List (NPL).”

(The airport isn’t listed on the NPL, but the Cortese Landfill in Narrowsburg is.)

The problem is PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). According to the EPA, they’re “a group of man-made chemicals that includes PFOA, PFOS, GenX” and others. They can show up in household products, Teflon, drinking water, food that’s packaged in PFAS-containing materials and in living organisms “where PFAS have the ability to build up and persist over time.”

“These chemicals are persistent in the environment; they travel in groundwater. It’s very difficult to get rid of them, and they have a variety of adverse health effects,” said Reik. She cited the Harvard School of Public Health, which says that PFAS are linked to “testicular and kidney cancers, decreased birth weight and thyroid disease.”

Edward McAndrew, public works commissioner, noted that the problem had been discussed at public works committee meetings, that they had a consultant and that they’d been working on it for two or three years now. “The highest level at the airport is 256 parts per trillion.” They’ve done the site characterization report and are just waiting on the DEC, he said. “Most airports have this issue.”

Use of the foam “started in the ‘60s,” McAndrew said. Firefighters held controlled burns and practiced putting out fires. The foam they used at the time had high levels of PFAS.

Politico reported that in 2016, the state began asking fire training and Department of Defense sites about their use of foam. More than 200 sites were found that may have been exposed to foams containing PFOS/PFAS. The use of foams with those chemicals is now prohibited, the news site said. 

“It was industry standard at the time,” McAndrew said. “We haven’t done it for many years and are now in the process of cleaning up.” 

Sullivan County, International Airport, hazardous waste problem,

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