Pax River’s Virtual Restoration Advisory Board Dog and Pony Show
The public is invited to attend on Wednesday, April 28 at 6:00 pm
By Pat Elder
April 26, 2021
The Patuxent River NAS logo above is redacted, like many Navy documents addressing contamination on bases around the world. The command of the Patuxent River NAS has threatened suit against me for “unauthorized use of a Navy indicator.”
“The DOD and the DON protect their names, insignia, and similar identifiers through various laws and regulations. This protection extends to the use of Navy indicators on online platforms per SECNAVINST 5870.7A” Of course, embedded media outlets are free to use the insignias.
The Patuxent River Naval Air Station in St. Mary’s County, Maryland will hold a virtual Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) meeting on the severe contamination of Southern Maryland’s environment with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS) on April 28, 2021 from 6-7 p.m. EDT on Microsoft Teams. Can you attend?
The public can join the virtual meeting by clicking on this link to the Microsoft Teams Meeting.
We must ask penetrating questions and demand clear and concise answers. This article will help to frame the discussion.
The Navy has invited “residents and other interested parties in the vicinity of NAS Patuxent River and Webster Outlying Field to attend." We’re all residents of a planet contaminated by the U.S. Navy. We’re all residents within the vicinity of this strategic base 75 miles south of Washington.
The Navy has released this presentation and is expected to closely adhere to this script as it does everywhere. Wednesday’s cast of characters will be handed a carefully crafted narrative prepared by the Pentagon and they’ll play their parts like actors in a traveling theatrical company.
Restoration Advisory Boards are dog and pony military psy-ops programs orchestrated by the Naval command to mute local resistance to their destruction of the environment.
This virtual RAB is a new and foreboding exercise for the military. They run the risk of coming across individuals they cannot control, like Cathy Wusterbarth, co-leader of the NOW (Need Our Water) group in Oscoda, Michigan. Last week Cathy tried to read a letter advocating for more robust cleanup of PFAS coming from Wurtsmuth Air Force Base. She was silenced by the command.
She said she was threatened with “repercussions” if she tried to read the letter. What is it they say about well-behaved women?
The contamination at tiny Webster Field is worse than Wurtsmuth where fish have been found to contain nearly 10 million parts per trillion of PFOS. Michigan bans eating fish near that shuttered base and it limits PFOS in drinking water to 16 ppt. Maryland hasn’t tested the drinking water throughout the state and it hasn’t tested the fish. That’s the first step in regulating these substances. Remember that, when the dutiful and subservient Maryland official addresses us on Wednesday.
The meeting will include a lengthy question and answer session with various representatives from the Navy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Maryland Department of Environment. These entities would be considered co-conspirators in a court of law that defends human rights in a land of justice.
The EPA does not consider PFAS to be hazardous substances and does not regulate them, although they sure do talk about them a lot and it sounds sincere. The Maryland Department of the Environment has published a scientifically challenged study that misrepresents facts about how poisoned the seafood is. It is reprehensible.
The presentation is likely to contain a slide that says the DOD considers groundwater above 40 parts per trillion to be a “conservative screening level for PFOS and PFOA in groundwater or soil that when exceeded should be considered a contaminant of potential concern in the risk assessment process and calculations of site-specific risk posed.” That’s their way of publicly recognizing that groundwater levels exceeding 40 ppt of PFAS threaten human health. The groundwater in St. Mary’s County contains 87,573 ppt of PFOS + PFOA. That’s 2,189 times the military’s threshold for “potential concern,” whatever that means. We’re dealing with the minds at the Pentagon here, so it doesn’t have to make sense and it often does not. Public health officials who are not affiliated with individual US states, the US government, or the DOD say we shouldn’t consume more than 1 part per trillion of these chemicals a day.
The Navy will use lots of terms unknown to most of us, like: RAB, CERCLA, SI Report, CEC’s, AFFF, DASN(E) Memo, BRAC, ERP, PA, AOI’s and they'll talk fast and they’ll sound important and official, but they’re poisoning us. We can’t forget that. They'll say they no longer use PFOS and PFOA and that they've replaced these chemicals with more environmentally friendly chemicals to put out fires, but the replacement chemicals are also linked to a host of cancers. They’ll say a lot of things between the lines. They’ll denigrate “unofficial sources” and “testing outside of establish protocols,” and “well-intentioned citizen scientists.” They'll pin the blame for the contamination elsewhere.
They’ll focus on the relative clean municipal drinking water in the community and the water on base. They’re not likely to address the seafood they’ve poisoned or the need for issuing fish advisories to protect women who are pregnant or may become pregnant.
They’ll show complex maps and charts with colored lines and numbers and arrows and indicators. The Navy will stress there’s no known concerns with off-base drinking water supplies and that both Pax River and Webster Field’s drinking water have been sampled twice and there’s no problem. They’re likely telling the truth. Drinking water, especially municipal water sources, are not the problem here. Drinking water can be filtered. It costs a lot. but it can be done. Cleaning up sediment, soil, groundwater, and surface water is an entirely different question. How, exactly are they going to take the PFAS out of the oysters, crabs, and fish - and their progeny?
They can’t, so they’ll talk about how they’re abiding by regulatory procedures and it’ll seem like they’re earnest and they’re trying. They’ll introduce intricate calendars with deadlines for their subordinates to perform perfunctory tasks to make it seem like they’re working hard to address the problem, but the problem is in our blood and in our DNA. The Navy knows this. They just don’t want you to know it. That’s because the chemicals serve their mission.
They’ll mention things like “Fate and transport of PFAS in environmental media” but they won’t say that translates to poisoning the beaches of their neighbors with foams that become airborne at times. They’ll keep mentioning the CERCLA process, and boy, it sure is complicated but the Navy is sticking to it because they’re your neighbors. They live here too. They’re part of the community. They’ll talk about “remediating” and “cleaning up” and disposing PFAS, but the brightest minds in the country don’t know what to do with this stuff. It’s a killer. It doesn’t go away and it’ll affect the lives of your descendants.
They’ll tell you that the CERCLA process at Pax River was awarded $3.6 in FY2020 and $2.2M has been budgeted this FY. (a drop of nearly 40%.) They’ll make it sound like a lot of money, but the DOD doesn’t assign great significance to any of this. It’s all about the money and the lobbyists and the contracts and the chemical industry and congressional members of certain committees. RAB’s are dog and pony shows.
The Navy is expecting this go away, but it won’t. If they seriously wanted to clean up the contamination in St. Mary’s County, the cost could approach a thousand times what they’re spending. It’s an intriguing calculus. Contamination levels are orders of magnitude above public health thresholds while the costs for true remediation are also the same orders of magnitude above what the Navy is currently spending on talking about cleaning it up.
The Navy says, “Participants will have the opportunity to submit questions via Microsoft Teams during the meeting.” They won’t say those questions will be addressed. A hundred questions won’t be addressed. It’s how they roll.
The RAB’s can be compared to explosive contamination chambers that are sometimes used by the Navy to dispose of unexploded ordnance at sites around the world. RABs defuse the citizenry.
See if you can do some reading, The Intercept and the Environmental Working Group are trustworthy, non-embedded outlets.
Please show up on Wednesday at 6:00 pm, and bring a like-minded friend or two.
Again, here’s the link to the meeting the Navy provided:
And here's the link to the Navy’s presentation:
https://patelder.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/3/6/10362012/pax_river_rab_presentation.pdf
Thanks,
Pat