A new team at the former Wurtsmith Air Force base in Oscoda is promising to improve transparency and expedite cleanup actions to address leaching contamination in the Au Sable River.
PFAS cleanup at Wurtsmith is now officially under the direction of the Air Force environmental section.
Brenda Roesch, with the Air Force, recognized Oscoda residents at the latest Wurtsmith Restoration Advisory Board meeting, supporting their wishes to have Wurtsmith become a model for PFAS cleanup.
"This particular community has a lot of excellent experts, and it's made this community and project lead the way in the continental U.S. but also potentially overseas on how we treat PFOA and PFOS," Roesch said.
It's still unclear how impending cuts to the DOD will affect cleanup at contaminated military bases across the country.
Cathy Wusterbarth is with the Oscoda advocacy group, Need Our Water. She said she's hopeful about the change and more access to technical experts, but she'd still like to see more urgency for implementing cleanup systems.
"They're described as long-range forecasts, but I would label them as 'much-too-long' range forecasts because they continue to be years and years, and that is still unacceptable to the community," Wusterbarth said.
In another development at Wurtsmith, residents with contaminated wells on the east side of Van Etten Lake that switched to a water main a few years ago can now request reimbursements for hooking up to the municipal line. Wusterbarth said this was an unexpected annoucement after around 10 households paid out-of-pocket for the main hookups years ago.
