New Hampshire’s congressional delegation is asking the U.S. Department of Defense to provide more information on potential delays to cleanup projects at sites contaminated with PFAS chemicals in New Hampshire.
In a letter, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan and Representatives Chris Pappas and Maggie Goodlander asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide a revised list of New Hampshire PFAS assessment and cleanup timelines and give an explanation for the changes by December 1. Similar delays may be happening at almost 140 sites across the country.
For decades, the Department of Defense used firefighting foam with high levels of PFAS, a group of man-made chemicals that can be harmful to humans. The chemicals persist for a long time in the environment, lending them the nickname “forever chemicals.”
That foam left behind contamination at the former Pease Air Force Base and at the New Boston Space Force Station, which environmental regulators have been working with the military to assess and clean up.
At the former Pease Air Force Base, a “remedial investigation,” part of the cleanup process that helps inform what further steps must be taken, was set to conclude this year, according to a federal document from 2024.
But in a report from this spring, the Department of Defense pushed the end date for that investigation back five years, to 2031.
For the New Boston Space Force Station, the initial end date for the investigation was set for 2028 and appears to have been pushed back to 2032.
New Hampshire’s delegation said the timeline revisions were done without any notice to Congress or to local leaders. The U.S. Air Force did not immediately return a request for comment.
Adam Crepeau, assistant commissioner at New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services, said the agency has not been informed about any changes to the timeline for the investigation at the former Pease Air Force Base, and they expect it will be completed by the end of 2026. The deadline was pushed from 2025 because the site required many stages of assessment, Crepeau said.
At the New Boston site, state regulators are working with the Air Force to complete a similar investigation. Crepeau did not address any potential changes to that project’s timeline, but said the investigation was ongoing and the site was “similarly complex.”
PFAS chemicals are associated with a variety of harmful health effects, including increased risk of some cancers.
Currently, federal officials say human exposures to PFAS and other contaminants are under control at the former Pease Air Force Base, but there is not enough data to say whether contaminated groundwater from the site is migrating or not.
In New Boston, as of May of this year, officials were still determining how much PFAS is present on areas of the site where firefighting foam might have been released.
