After at least 40 wells near the La Crosse Regional Airport were found to be contaminated with outstanding levels of a chemical group found in firefighting foam, city officials are beginning to map out next steps.
At last week’s La Crosse Common Council meeting, members began to comb through the details while looking ahead to policy and budget decisions down the road.
In immediate remedial steps, city officials have deployed bottled water to those impacted by contamination by perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Residents are encouraged to use the bottled water for drinking, cooking, gardening and other instances of ingestion.
But beyond that, the next steps are still in very early stages, and issues such as litigation or a new water source are on pause while the bigger picture continues to emerge.
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“Once we started getting the results back, and moving to the private well sampling we’ve been working just fast and furious,” said John Storlie with The OS Group, the city’s environmental partners.
“And we haven’t had a chance to sit back and do some close analysis of the data,” Storlie said.
Specifically, officials said it will take some time to understand which brands of foam have been used over time, which will be key information in potential lawsuits the city pursues.
“We do see some differences, but at this point,” Storlie said of early clues in identifying the exact chemical compounds found, "what we see looks to be more a naturally-occuring breakdown.”
PFAS are known as “forever chemicals,” meaning they do not disappear from the environment over time. Storlie explained that PFAS do break down in a sense, but only into less concentrated forms of the dangerous chemicals, like a nesting doll that unravels downstream.
For instance, at the testing pits where the foam was directly applied, there is a wider variety of the compounds present, including what Storlie called “precursor” and “terminal” PFAS.
But as the contamination moved downstream, there was mostly just “terminal” PFAS present — a breakdown process that can help officials narrow down the investigation.
“I think that that’s more what we’re gonna see than any kind of fingerprinting,” Storlie said.
“The other complicating factor,” he added, “is we know what kind of firefighting foam is currently being used at the airport, but we don’t know what’s been used historically going back to the ‘70s or even before. And the manufacturers keep the compound of their product proprietary and trade secret.”
“That fingerprinting to a particular foam is really hard to do,” Storlie said. “It’s a hard thing to do.”
“The city is, was mandated by the FAA for decades to use this material, and so we are still actually mandated to use this same material. We’re doing everything we can to eliminate it,” La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat said.
La Crosse Fire Chief Ken Gilliam said that the foam has been nearly eliminated from its operations except for the crash rigs at the airport, where they are still federally required to use it in the event of a plane crash. But the foam is no longer used in other fire responses or trainings.
“From a damage standpoint, no further damage should occur outside, God-forbid, an airline crash,” Gilliam said.
Officials will soon begin to test another roughly 50 wells to further investigate and lock-down the boundaries of the contamination.
This will include testing wells of about 14 homes northwest of the airport spill sites, and officials said if contamination is found there, the investigation could then be in someone else’s ballpark.
“If we found contamination in (the northwest area), typically, in a contamination study, that gets us off the hook, because it’s coming from upstream properties,” said Storlie.
Groundwater investigations found that the flow of groundwater on French Island flows southeast, meaning any contamination found northwest of an identified spill point would indicate a separate pollution event, likely not from the airport.
The city of La Crosse owns and operates the airport, but the remainder of French Island is under control of the town of Campbell.
“We’d have to evaluate that, working with you all to decide if we want to continue spending the city’s money to sample when we don’t think it’s your responsibility,” Storlie said.
If those properties yielded concerning results, Storlie said they would start by sending that data to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to see if they would first take over the investigation.
To run a sample through the lab costs nearly $300, Storlie said, but the overall process of sampling, sending letters to residents and then reviewing the data costs closer to $1,000 per test.
For the next 50-some tests, the bill will be around $51,500.
Still, this next round of testing does not signal an end in sight for the investigative piece of the process, and officials said things are just getting started.
After those samples are collected and results are in, officials will compile a report and send it to the DNR as a next step.
Meanwhile, city officials are beginning to brainstorm solutions.
“Our staff and engineering and utilities and others are putting together, with John, various options for providing and making sure that we have safe drinking water,” Kabat said.
“Whether that’s municipal water, whether that’s carbon filters or some system, that’s being investigated. And will then be brought back to the council for ongoing discussions,” Kabat said.
“This is something that we’re going to be dealing with for quite some time,” Kabat said. “Our immediate concern was obviously those private wells and understanding those levels.”
“There is not a quick answer to this issue,” he said.