War is hell, and it's also pretty dirty. Today on Parts Pavilion, we talk about cleaning up polluted military sites with the congressman who oversees the Pentagon's environmental remediation efforts. Hello, and welcome back once again to Parts per Billion, the
podcast from Bloomberg Environment. I'm your host David Schultz. On today's episode, we'll be hearing from John garamendi He's been involved in politics for more than forty years, starting out in the California legislature, than becoming the state's insurance commissioner, then serving in the Bill Clinton Interior Department, until eventually being elected to Congress. Garamendy is a Democrat representing a
district just outside of Sacramento. But more importantly, at least for our purposes, Garamendy is the chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee that deals with environmental cleanup issues. I spoke with him at his office in Washington and asked him is the Pentagon's program to clean up its messes working? It is working, it is not working as well as it should, and it has not been working long enough. The long enough part is key. He says, this is
not a problem that started overnight. For years, perhaps decades, maybe even a century or more, the military didn't pay much attention to toxics that they were using and where they were disposing of them, or if they bothered to dispose them, they just take them out back and dump them. So there is an enormous amount of contamination on military basis and near military basis, and the military has been working on that fast enough. No. Garrimandy has first hand
experience with this. He says, when he was at the Interior Department in the nineties, the Pentagon was giving his department a lot of its decommissioned property. We go, wait a minute, what are you giving us. You're giving us a whole lot of contamination. And so at that point we became very very aware of the problem and undertook legislation to require that the military, when it disposes of property,
that it'd be responsible for cleaning up their mess. And when Garamandy says mess, he really means it the contamination that resulted from the military operations dating back all the way to the Civil War. There's still unexploded ordinance from the Civil War somewhere in the fields in the eastern part of the United States. You can go across almost every state in America and find waste, toxics, unexploded ordinances
in many places. So you go through the encyclopedia of things that are harmful, and somewhere in America or somewhere around the world, the US military has left that harmful thing behind. However, Garamandy also says that it's actually easier to deal with the military when it comes to environmental cleanup than a private company, mainly because companies sometimes go out of business and disappear. The military, you can usually get your hands on the military. They're still around that Yeah,
we know where they operate. Out of them, we know where to find them. The problem with the military is it's the choices that are made by Congress about how much money to provide the military and the directions to get the job done, and so there are many many demands on the military. They have their own, Congress has its list of priorities. The cleanup then has to contend with those other priorities, and one of the biggest priorities for both Congress and the Pentagon right now is p fast.
If you've listened to this podcast before, you know what I'm talking about. But if you haven't. P fas are a type of chemical used in nonstick coatings and also in firefighting foam. It's actually an acronym for a very long chemical name that I won't attempt to say out loud into a microphone, but you can just use your imagination. The main problem with p fax chemicals is that they don't break down in the environment. They just stick around and can seep into groundwater and into our bodies. These
chemicals are ubiquitous. They are literally everywhere, and certainly the military has its share of the problem that it's been created, specifically the firefighting foams, which happen to be extremely good at fighting fires, and the military uses them obviously, military fires, airplane ships, you name. It very dangerous for the personnel. A lot of deaths occur as a result of it, and so the use of the most effective firefighting was
the order of the day. But now the Pentagon is coming to grips with the consequences of spraying all this p fast laden foam all over its bases. It's been testing groundwater and filtering the chemicals out in some places, but it's looking like Congress is wanting the Pentagon to
move more quickly. A bill that came out of Garamendi subcommittee and subsequently passed out of the full House would require the military to develop an alternative, non p fast firefighting foam by no later than twenty twenty five, and they can do it. There's clear evidence that there are other kinds of reach firefighting holmes retardants that can be
used rather than this particular p FAZ chemical. We also said something that I think is equally important, and that is you're not going to practice with this stuff, Go get shaving cream. Find some other thing that you can use to practice in your firefighting training programs. The bill also addresses reports that some farmers, particularly dairy farmers, are finding that the water they give to their livestock is contaminated with pfas It would require the Pentagon to provide
these farmers with uncontaminated water. The Trump administration is objecting to this provision, saying it singles out the military when p FASZ contamination could actually be coming from a myriad of sources. But Garrimandi sees this issue in black and white terms. In every case, if the military caused the problem,
it's their responsibility to solve the problem. The Senate has also passed its own version of the military bill, and over the next few weeks, the two chambers are going to iron out their differences and then send something to the Present in its desk. Both the House bill and the Senate bill contain provisions forcing the Pentagon to act more quickly on PFAS, provisions that the White House has
said it doesn't want. Garrimedi's the congressional negotiators are talking with the White House on this, but he's confident that most, if not all, of the PFAS language will stay in the final bill. I don't think the President wants this fight. I don't think he wants to tell the constituents in Middle America that he doesn't give a hoot about them whether they are facing contaminated water. So I think this will not be the principal fight. There may be some
issues around the edges. I understand that there may be some issues about how this chemical is classified, whether it's appropriate that it be classified as an exceedingly dangerous chemical in the Defense Authorization Bill or some other piece of legislation. But I don't see this being the major fight, and there will undoubtedly be some language changes along but we're
going to deal with this one. That's interesting. It sounds like just to sort of wrap up, you think most of the language that was in the House bill and the Senate bill will wind up in the final version that goes to the President's desk. I'm very, very confident that every member of Congress that has ever heard of this wants this issue solved, and they certainly don't want to be responsible for it not being solved. That was Congressman John Garamendi, a Democrat from California, speaking in his
Washington office. You can find more of our reporting on cleanup issues and on pfas specifically at our website News dot Bloomberg, Environment dot com, and if you want to chat with us on social media, use the hashtag parts per B. That hashtag, once again is parts per B. Today's episode of Parts per Billion was produced by myself along with Marissa Horne and Jessica Coombs. Nicholas Anzelota is our audio engineer. The music for this episode is a
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