This following quote came from a WCAI report on May 25, 2023, the evening of the EPA hearing on the draft determination that the proposed multipurpose machine gun range represented a significant threat to the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve.
Colonel Matthew Porter, base commander at Camp Edwards, said he wanted to assuage the EPA’s concerns about “potential” chemical loading. “They’re being very protectionary [sic] because the future is unknowable, and that’s the way they’re looking at it,” he said. “[But] it’s not based in historic science. It’s not based on 100 years of field firing. It’s not based on our studies. It’s not based on what we’ve been dealing with.”
What then is the history of this location and water protection? Taken from the latest monthly report posted by the staff at Joint Base Cape Cod responsible for running the $1.4 billion and counting clean-up of this federal Superfund site, here is the Massachusetts National Guard’s own accounting, through April 2023, of the volumes of water contaminated by military activity inclusive of munitions use and disposal by location:
Demolition Area 1: 4.386 billion gallons
J2 Range: 3.664 billion gallons
Eastern Plant: 2.518 billion gallons
J3 Range: 1.712 billion gallons
J1 Range: 758 million gallons
Northern Plan 1.270 billion gallons
Central Impact Area: 3.198 billion gallons
For those of you keeping score at home, that is 17.5 billion gallons of water that was contaminated enough by military activity on the base to require treatment.
Every drop of that water is part of our sole source aquifer that provides all—not some, but all—of our drinking water. As appalling as the fact that over 17 billion gallons of water on the base has required advanced treatment to remove toxic chemicals at a taxpayer cost of $1.4 billion is that fact that the clean-up is not done; it’s not even close to done.
All these facts, the actual history of what the Cape has been dealing with for decades, are all made worse by the JBCC leadership’s (see Col. Porter’s quote above to refresh your memory) inability to apply the lessons of the past to ongoing and future activities on top of the last remaining water supply reserves available to the Upper Cape towns.
Ask yourself, given the history here, isn’t it logical to be worried that it is about to repeat itself? Ask yourself if it is possible to be overly protective of our last remaining water supply? APCC has looked at the data and we agree that EPA has it right. Once lost, our water supply cannot be restored without extraordinary expense and disruption, if at all. If you care about having clean water to drink, you can tell EPA that you agree with them. What happens from here is on us.
