The Department of Defense has quietly put on hold its crucial cleanup operations for dangerous ‘forever chemicals’ at nearly 140 military facilities nationwide. This information comes from a detailed analysis of a recently released list of sites by The New York Times.
Known as PFAS, these persistent chemicals are a primary component in firefighting foam, and the Pentagon has historically been a major consumer. For many years, military personnel at U.S. bases conducted training exercises by igniting jet fuel fires and then extinguishing them with massive quantities of this foam. This practice inadvertently allowed the chemicals to seep into the surrounding soil and groundwater.
By 2017, communities near military installations across the nation started to detect concerning levels of these chemicals in their drinking water. Mounting scientific studies have since established a clear link between PFAS exposure and severe health problems, including specific types of cancer, issues with child development, and fertility challenges.
This revised Pentagon schedule could postpone cleanup efforts around certain military locations by almost a decade. The recently published list, dated March and released without formal announcement, indicates site-specific delays that collectively represent a substantial shift from the prior timeline. That earlier plan was made public just three months prior, in December 2024, during the final period of the Biden administration.
The Department of Defense, now controversially rebranded as the Department of War by the Trump administration, remained silent when asked for comment on these delays.
This updated timeline emerges amidst potential budget reductions for toxic site remediation, even as the military grapples with a widespread contamination crisis. Since 2017, the Defense Department has allocated $2.6 billion towards assessing the scope of contamination, and in severely impacted areas, it has provided affected communities with clean drinking water.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, earn their ‘forever chemical’ moniker due to their extreme persistence in the environment. The Defense Department has previously acknowledged that its broader cleanup initiative, still in its initial stages, will demand many years and billions of dollars to reach completion.
Unfortunately, certain communities may now face even longer waits for relief.
These new delays by the Defense Department impact crucial preparatory phases that must precede any actual cleanup, such as the vital work of pinpointing the most effective remediation strategies. Since this preliminary work itself can span several years, the revised schedule indicates that actual cleanup at some sites might not commence until 2039 or even later.
The Defense Department’s report shows that preliminary work has been postponed at approximately a quarter of the nearly 600 military sites where PFAS contamination has been identified. For these specific locations, the delays average about five years beyond what was outlined in the December 2024 schedule.
Local officials in areas surrounding these contaminated military sites expressed surprise and frustration, stating they were not informed of these changes.
Kristen Mello, a city councilor from Westfield, Massachusetts, a community near the Barnes Air National Guard Base, voiced her concern: ‘There’s been no discussion of a delay.’ Mello, who is a chemist and grew up in the area where her father served as a lieutenant colonel at the base, added, ‘It’s deeply upsetting and disheartening that we haven’t received clearer communications.’
Adding to the concerns, these delays coincide with the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for 2026, which aims to substantially reduce funding for toxic site cleanups. Furthermore, this act would reverse a current prohibition on the procurement and use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam, potentially leading to even more PFAS being released into our environment.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing criticism for his suggested budget cuts for the Pentagon. Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has openly questioned if Hegseth’s ‘hasty, arbitrary strategy’ might compromise national security.
Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat also on the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated that communities ‘are utterly fed up with obstacles, inactivity, bureaucracy, and ongoing delays.’ She emphasized, ‘This isn’t a partisan matter, and President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have no valid justification for these actions.’
The monumental scale of the cleanup operation presents a significant hurdle. A report released this year by the Government Accountability Office highlighted that Defense officials found the sheer number of military sites nationwide requiring PFAS contamination assessment to be ‘overwhelming.’
Officials reported a scarcity of specific information regarding where PFAS had been deployed at each location. This necessitated extensive testing across entire installations, with some assessments spanning hundreds of thousands of acres.
Moreover, the report noted that there is currently no widely accessible technology capable of rapidly and completely eliminating PFAS contamination from both soil and water. Existing solutions are described as imperfect and labor-intensive. For instance, extracting PFAS from groundwater involves a complex process of pumping water from the ground, filtering it, and then reinjecting it.
During the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implemented stricter limits on PFAS levels in drinking water to better safeguard public health. These new regulations also elevated the standards for the Defense Department’s cleanup operations, which may have inadvertently contributed to the current delays.
Federal estimates suggest that fully addressing PFAS contamination around military sites will span decades and incur annual costs close to $7 billion. This staggering figure represents a 1,500 percent increase in just three years, reflecting a clearer understanding of the contamination’s true scale, as detailed in the GAO report.
Alissa H. Czyz, Director of Defense Capabilities and Management at the Government Accountability Office, commented in an interview: ‘It’s a very long-term process, and there’s just so much uncertainty. This is going to be a massive effort.’
Czyz further warned that even the current cost projections might be underestimated. The report ultimately concludes that the cleanup could take many years, possibly up to a century, to complete, and it called for greater transparency from the Defense Department to Congress regarding these efforts.
She added, ‘We understand that the D.O.D. is still trying to grasp the full scope of what’s involved. However, they haven’t been truly transparent with Congress about the potential costs.’
Meanwhile, a proposed House bill aims to mandate that the Secretary of Defense provide Congress with annual updates on PFAS funding and cleanup progress.
Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat from Michigan, stated that ‘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 numerous affected communities, the pace of cleanup is simply not fast enough.
Just last month, New Mexico’s environmental regulatory body published a study revealing high levels of PFAS in the bloodstream of individuals residing or working near Cannon Air Force Base, located south of Clovis, New Mexico. For decades, the base utilized firefighting foam containing PFAS during training and in response to aircraft fires, leading to contamination of the local drinking water supply.
Beyond military use, these chemicals are also found in a wide array of everyday consumer products, including nonstick cookware, rain-resistant apparel, stain-repellent carpets, and even dental floss.
New Mexico initiated a lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force in 2019 concerning PFAS contamination originating from military bases within the state. The lawsuit asserts that the federal government is responsible for remediating the pollution and compensating for the harm caused to New Mexico’s natural resources and private property.
The most recent Pentagon document indicates that the cleanup efforts specifically for Cannon Air Force Base have been pushed back by nearly six years.
James Kenney, Secretary of New Mexico’s Environment Department, commented in an interview, ‘The longer these cleanup efforts are delayed, the more significant the negative impacts will be on New Mexico’s water and its residents.’
These delays by the Defense Department are also impacting private sector companies poised to assist with the cleanup. Randol Aikin, CEO of Remedy, a California start-up focused on innovative PFAS elimination from soil, is among those affected.
Aikin noted his company’s participation in a DOD certification program for emerging technologies. He stressed the importance of timeliness, stating, ‘As a technology start-up, we’re really sensitive to timing.’
At the Barnes Air National Guard Base, which polluted the water supply of Westfield, Massachusetts, the Department of Defense did install water treatment systems in 2020 to begin removing PFAS from the groundwater.
Despite the urgency, Ms. Mello, the city councilor, confirmed that the new cleanup timeline was not brought up by the Defense Department during their July meeting with a local advisory board. Yet, she acknowledges the monumental task facing the military in these cleanup efforts.
Mello concluded, ‘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.’