In 2021, the Department of Defense estimated it would take $31 billion to clean up its known contaminated sites.
But in a new study, the Environmental Working Group says the DOD continues to “lowball” its cleanup budget requests.
Jared Hayes, with the Working Group, said cleanup costs are only expected to increase, as more sites are studied and discovered.
“We call the escalating backlog a ‘cleanup time bomb’ because based on current trajectories, DOD’s cleanup challenge will become increasingly difficult, if not impossible to overcome, without substantial increases in funding,” Hayes said.
The study says at the current rate of cleanup funding, it would take more than 50 years to clean up contaminated sites.
John Reeder, with the Environmental Working Group, said even though the DOD has known about PFAS contamination on its bases for decades, not a single site has been fully cleaned up.
“The problem demands urgency, which the administration recognized when it announced a government-wide plan to tackle PFAS in 2021," Reeder said. "But instead of urgency, the DOD has consistently requested less funding for cleanups than Congress provided.”
The DOD was supposed to release a PFAS clean-up schedule and cost estimate for its contaminated sites last fall.
