Aug. 25 – No one knows how much toxic firefighting foam concentrate is in Maine, where it is, or whether it is stored safely.
But state environmental officials do know that Brunswick Executive Airport is not the only place where this type of chemical concentrate is still being used to fight fires. Nor is it the only place where the foam has been dumped on the ground, washed down storm drains or into streams and oceans.
According to data from the state Department of Environmental Protection going back a decade, about a quarter of these releases were accidental, resulting from broken equipment, training errors or improper storage, and when there was no working fire nearby.
It was only two years ago that Maine passed a law requiring people to report foam spills to the state, so state data from before that has been spotty. But federal data shows this week’s Brunswick spill is the largest accidental spill in Maine since it began keeping records in the 1990s.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Brunswick spill (1,450 gallons of aqueous film-forming foam concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water) is the sixth-largest spill in the U.S. in 30 years, following other spills in Florida, Alabama, Arizona (where two larger spills occurred) and Ohio.
The chemicals in the foam can cause serious harm even in small doses, said Jared Hayes, senior policy analyst at Environmental Working Group, a health care nonprofit in Washington, D.C. This will likely create a long-term contamination problem for the Brunswick area, he said.
“Neighbors should be concerned,” Hayes said. “So yes, this is a problem. It’s a pretty big problem.”
Hayes’ group monitors foam spills across the country, most of which can be traced back to the military. Brunswick Airport is on the site of a former U.S. Navy base.
According to EPA data based on information collected by the U.S. Coast Guard National Response Center, there have been 1,200 firefighting foam spills nationwide since 1990 that contained toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or forever chemicals.
Aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, is used by firefighters to fight high-intensity fuel fires at military bases, civilian airports, fuel terminals and industrial plants that use large amounts of chemicals, such as paper mills. The foam forms a film or blanket over the fire, giving it the oxygen it needs to burn.
According to the EPA, firefighting foam is the most common source of persistent chemical contamination in the U.S., but PFAS has been found in trace amounts almost everywhere, from polar bears in the Arctic to dairy farmers in Maine.
Maine has long struggled with the agricultural legacy of converting PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge into fertilizer, resulting in hundreds of farm fields and wells across Maine being tested for water, soil, food and livestock in excess of safe state and federal standards.
Even trace amounts of some PFAS are considered a public health risk, according to federal regulators. High exposure over a long period of time can cause cancer. Exposure during critical life stages, such as early childhood, can also cause life-changing damage.
Military and civilian firefighters have used specialty foams containing forever chemicals, or PFAS, for decades to quell the intense flames caused by fuel fires. While manufacturers are no longer allowed to use two versions of the chemicals, there are still large quantities of “legacy” PFAS-containing foams on the market.
The largest AFFF release in the nation’s history occurred when lightning struck a hangar at Melbourne Orlando International Airport in Florida in 1995, causing the fire suppression system to release 805,000 gallons of foam, a mixture of concentrate and water.
Brunswick Executive Airport was also the site of what was, until this week, the largest AFFF spill in Maine. In 2000, when the Navy was still operating a 3,100-acre naval air station there, a power outage knocked a fire suppression system offline, leaking 500 gallons of foam. All but five gallons were recovered.
In 2019, a regular test of the fire suppression system in Hangar 4 went wrong when someone forgot to close a drain that was supposed to keep all the firefighting foam out of the sewer. But that accident resulted in a few tens of dollars spilled, not tens of thousands.
After last week’s spill, DEP officials estimated that Clean Harbors, a private contractor hired to contain and clean up the mess, collected about 6,000 gallons of the 51,450 gallons of foam and water that was released. The state is awaiting test results to see how much ended up near Harpswell Cove.
Maine has previously attempted to find out how much AFFF is in fire truck tanks, firefighting system tanks, and even storage cabinets. But a survey by fire departments and “industry partners,” including airports, fuel terminals, and chemical plants, was largely ignored.
According to state data, only 60 of Maine’s 305 fire departments and eight of 20 industry partners responded.
In 2021, Maine passed legislation banning the sale or distribution of new AFFF products containing PFAS. However, there were some notable exceptions for companies that could demonstrate they were required by federal law or contract to stock the old foam, such as Bath Iron Works or a federally regulated airport.
Others have had to switch to PFAS-free firefighting foam, which takes slightly longer to extinguish a high-intensity fire and often requires the purchase of new distribution systems. The state exemption would disappear if the Federal Aviation Administration or the U.S. military dropped their old foam requirement.
Both have since done so, but the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit organization that sets national fire safety codes, has yet to update its requirements for firefighting foam. Maine is adopting the NFPA code as its own, and Brunswick is adopting and enforcing the state code.
That means Brunswick Executive Airport can’t switch to PFAS-free firefighting foam now, even if it wanted to, said Ken Brillant, Brunswick’s fire chief. It will take a few years for Maine, and then Brunswick, to catch up. Until then, an airport in Maine has no choice but to use PFAS foam.
Some Brunswick state lawmakers want to change that, even as foam makers warn that the new PFAS-free concentrates could be just as bad for the aquatic environment as the old foam. If that happens, the state would still have to come up with a disposal plan for the thousands of gallons of old foam concentrate that would remain.
Based on limited research data, Maine DEP Commissioner Melanie Loyzim estimates it would cost $2 million to burn all of Maine’s old AFFF foam. That’s the plan for the AFFF pulled from the spill Monday: send it to an incineration facility in Texas.
But Loyzim doesn’t want to ship Maine’s dirty foam to another state to be incinerated. That feels like passing the buck. Burned PFAS simply falls back into the soil — in this case, Texas soil — and eventually ends up in the groundwater, where it can leak into a residential well or irrigate a farm field.
She would rather do what New Hampshire is doing and send it to Ohio to be broken down with superheated water, a green but very expensive disposal option. First they need to reclaim as much of the Brunswick spill as possible, and then they will turn their attention to trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
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