The Department of Defense has quietly pushed back the timeline for cleaning up hazardous “forever chemicals” at nearly 140 military installations across the United States. According to an analysis of a recently released list, these delays could extend cleanup efforts in some communities by almost a decade. PFAS, a crucial component in firefighting foam, has been extensively used by the military for decades. Training exercises often involved igniting jet-fuel fires and extinguishing them with vast amounts of this foam, which then seeped into the soil and groundwater. By 2017, alarming concentrations of these chemicals were being reported in the drinking water of military communities nationwide. Extensive research continues to link PFAS exposure to serious health risks, including various cancers, as well as child developmental and fertility issues. The updated timeline, issued in March and made public without formal announcement, significantly revises an earlier cleanup schedule from December 2024, which was released in the final days of the Biden administration. The exact length of the delays varies from site to site.
The Defense Department, now referred to as the Department of War by the Trump administration, has not yet commented on these changes. These new delays coincide with potential funding cuts for toxic site cleanups, even as the military grapples with this ongoing contamination crisis. Since 2017, the Defense Department has allocated $2.6 billion to investigate the full extent of the contamination, and in critical situations, has provided clean drinking water to affected areas. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are aptly named “forever chemicals” due to their persistent nature in the environment. The department previously stated that the broader cleanup operation, which has yet to properly commence, would require years and billions of dollars. Now, many communities face an even longer wait.
These new postponements directly impact critical preparatory work — such as identifying the most effective cleanup methods — which must be completed before any physical cleanup can begin. This preparatory phase alone can take several years. Consequently, some sites might not see actual cleanup efforts start until at least 2039, based on this new timetable. Roughly a quarter of the nearly 600 military locations with known PFAS contamination have had their preparatory work delayed by an average of about five years compared to the previous December 2024 schedule. Local officials and communities impacted by these sites expressed surprise. Kristen Mello, a city councilor in Westfield, Massachusetts, near the Barnes Air National Guard Base, stated, “There’s been no discussion of a delay. It’s very upsetting and depressing that we haven’t had clearer communications.” Ms. Mello, a chemist whose father served as a lieutenant colonel at the Barnes base, emphasizes the lack of transparency.
The delays are also occurring amidst attempts in the National Defense Authorization Act for 2026 to drastically reduce funding for toxic site cleanups. This proposed legislation could also reverse the ban on purchasing and using PFAS firefighting foam, potentially leading to further environmental releases. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has faced criticism over his suggested budget cuts for the Pentagon. Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has publicly questioned whether Hegseth’s “rushed, arbitrary strategy” might compromise national security. Senator Elissa Slotkin, another Democrat from Michigan on the same committee, remarked, “Communities are sick and tired of roadblocks, inaction, red tape and further delays. This is not a partisan issue, and President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have no excuse here.”
The sheer magnitude of this cleanup operation presents a significant challenge. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlighted that Defense officials found the number of installations requiring PFAS assessment “overwhelming.” They admitted to having scant information on where PFAS might have been used at each location, necessitating extensive testing across potentially hundreds of thousands of acres. Furthermore, there’s currently no widely available technology capable of quickly and completely removing PFAS contamination from soil and water. Existing solutions are acknowledged as imperfect and labor-intensive, often requiring groundwater to be pumped out, filtered, and then reinjected. Under the previous Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established new, stricter limits on PFAS in drinking water to safeguard public health, which inadvertently raised the bar for Defense Department cleanups and may have contributed to these recent delays.
The federal government now estimates that fully cleaning up PFAS around contaminated military sites will span decades and incur annual costs close to $7 billion. This figure represents a staggering 1,500 percent increase in just three years, reflecting a clearer understanding of the contamination’s vast scope, according to the GAO report. Alissa H. Czyz, director of defense capabilities and management at the Government Accountability Office, emphasized the long-term nature of the problem: “It’s a very long-term process, and there’s just so much uncertainty. This is going to be a massive effort.” She suggested that even current cost projections might be too low, with the complete cleanup potentially taking as long as a century. The report urged the Defense Department to be more transparent with Congress regarding the process and costs involved.
A House bill is currently attempting to mandate annual updates from the Secretary of Defense to Congress regarding PFAS funding and cleanup specifics. Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Michigan Democrat, underscored the urgency: “Communities impacted by PFAS chemicals have been waiting decades for cleanup, and they’ve been kept in the dark. When cleanup timelines change, residents deserve to know.” For many communities, remediation efforts cannot begin soon enough. Last month, New Mexico’s environmental regulator released a study revealing elevated PFAS levels in the blood of residents and workers near Cannon Air Force Base, south of Clovis, N.M. Decades of using PFAS-laden firefighting foam in training and aircraft fire responses at the base severely polluted local drinking water. These persistent chemicals are also commonly found in consumer goods such as nonstick cookware, waterproof jackets, stain-resistant carpets, and even dental floss.
In 2019, New Mexico initiated legal action against the U.S. Air Force, demanding federal accountability for the pollution from military bases within its borders, and seeking compensation for damages to the state’s natural resources and private property. The most recent Pentagon update indicates that the cleanup at Cannon Air Force Base has been delayed by nearly six years. James Kenney, Secretary of New Mexico’s Environment Department, warned that “The longer they delay in cleanup, the greater the impacts to New Mexico’s water, and to New Mexicans.” The Defense Department’s delays are also impacting companies poised to assist in the remediation. Randol Aikin, CEO of Remedy, a California startup developing novel PFAS elimination methods for soil, noted his company’s participation in a DOD certification program for new technologies. “As a technology start-up, we’re really sensitive to timing,” he said. At the Barnes Air National Guard Base, which contaminated Westfield, Massachusetts’s water supply, the Department of Defense did install water treatment systems in 2020 to begin removing PFAS from groundwater. Despite this, City Councilor Mello noted the new timeline wasn’t mentioned at a July advisory board meeting. She acknowledged the immense scale of the undertaking but expressed skepticism: “We understand that an enormous environmental disaster happened here. I’m not even sure that with six more years, they’re going to figure out how to do this.”