Above: Dane County Regional Airport development sign in front of the unremediated Darwin burn pit site.
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This post may be changed/updated…
About one year ago, I posted this: Again, Madison and Dane County pass the buck to the military on cleaning up burn pits. Why?
One year later, is the military investigating the burn pits, or even planning to? No. Sometime within the last year, U.S. military leaders quietly decided–somewhere behind closed doors, on an unknown date–to punt the burn pit ball again, presumably back to the city and/or county.
We don’t know if this decision was discussed with the city, county, and/or airport officials. The January 2022 Draft ANG site investigation proposal simply excluded the burn pits from investigation plans. Few noticed it. When DNR’s Steve Ales asked why they weren’t included, he got this response from the Air National Guard:
“The FFTAs [fire-fighting training areas, or burn pits] are not solely owned by WI ANG and, to date, it has not been identified as a RP with sole responsibility for investigation and cleanup in those areas. Therefore, sampling and characterization within the FFTA boundaries is not specifically included in the RI and no revisions are recommended to the RI Work Plan.”
Hmmm. What does this mean?
Passing the buck on the burn pits has been the go-to strategy since the 1980s
The parties responsible for the burn pits—Dane County (current owner and former user of the burn pits), the City of Madison (former owner and user) and the U.S. military (former user)–have been passing the burn pit hot potato around repeatedly since contamination was discovered at the Darwin burn pit in the late 1980s. There’s no point re-writing the long and ridiculous story here— last year’s post includes most of the relevant history. [1]
The absurd, decades-long history of city-county-military bickering over who is responsible for the burn pits is almost comical. But given that the DCRA burn pits have some of the highest PFAS contamination found to date at Truax Field (not to mention many other toxic contaminants)–and are directly adjacent to beleaguered, repeatedly poisoned Starkweather Creek–it’s not funny. It’s criminal.
The shirking of responsibility by all of these responsible parties, whose primary concerns are not having to pay for the investigations and cleanup, shows complete disregard for the health and well-being of the people living downstream of this contamination, and those who eat the PFAS-contaminated fish from Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona–many of whom are low income people of color.
Will the city and county step up to the plate now, after decades of avoiding it, blaming others?
Political dynamics have obviously shifted since Madison Mayor Rhodes-Conway’s election in 2019. In an interview after emerging from the primary with Soglin, as reported in Steve Verburg’s 2019 Wisconsin State Journal article on the burn pits, Rhodes-Conway said: “I certainly don’t want the city to go it alone. I want us to collaborate and partner with all concerned. (But the) bottom line is we can’t wait and we can’t pass the buck. … We need to know what the threats are.” (highlights added)
The story shifted after Rhodes-Conway was elected. On May 23, 2021 Chris Hubbuch reported on Madison Mayor Rhodes-Conway’s response to the Sustainable Madison Committee’s April 27 recommendations for city actions to address Truax Field’s PFAS problems. Rhodes-Conway wrote: “The City is involved in work related to two on-site fire training areas (also called “burn pits”) because we are a former owner of the airport (until 1974) and we are likely a former user of the fire training areas…It is good news that the main known sources of pollution – the Truax site and the burn pits – are being included in the National Guard’s remedial investigation. The remedial investigation is one stage of the Federal CERCLA clean-up process, and we are hopeful that federal funding will continue through the following stages for full remediation…” (To be clear, the City is a documented, not just a “likely,” user of the burn pits).
Now, as far as we can tell, Madison and Dane County agencies and officials don’t care much–or if they do, are staying mum publicly. Neither the city nor the county has publicly responded to the Air National Guard dropping the burn pits from its federally-funded site investigation (though they are likely discussing it behind closed doors).
The community, as usual, is in the dark. What discussions and negotiations are happening between the county, city, and military about the burn pit investigations? What are they planning to do (or not do)? Will the county and/or the city step up to the plate to investigate and clean them up now?
It doesn’t look promising. The Dane County Regional Airport appears to be more concerned about expansion and development ($$) than taking immediate steps to investigate and clean up the burn pits, their most glaring PFAS hotspots. Having already built a cell phone lot nearly over the former Darwin burn pit area (behind the sign in the photo above)—heck, why not just develop over the whole thing and call it a day? Out of sight, out of mind!
Meanwhile, Dane County is publicly touting its actions to address airport PFAS problems–expensive, pilot PFAS hotspot treatments, dubious experimental technologies that have not been effective in the field to date–as well as its recent lawsuit against 3M and other manufacturers of fire-fighting foams with PFAS.
Whether or not these approaches succeed (and the prognosis isn’t especially rosy), they will take a very long time. Most importantly, even if they are effective in time, they will do nothing to clean up the burn pits. So while the county tinkers with experimental remedial approaches that will likely fail, and its lawyers haggle with huge corporate PFAS-manufacturers (with the best attorneys in the world), the burn pits will continue to ooze PFAS and myriad other poisons into our groundwater, Starkweather Creek, and Lake Monona–and build up in the bodies of people living around the creek and eating its fish.
Way to go, progressive, privileged, and “green” Madison and Dane County!
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[1] While reviewing records on the Truax Landfill debacle, I learned that beginning in the 1980s, and for years after that, the city and county repeatedly lobbied the Department of Defense to cough up funds for investigations and cleanup of the former Truax Landfill, Burke sewage plant, a fuel oil tank area just south of the Darwin burn pit, and the burn pit itself. The DoD resisted but agreed to do some testing. The 1989 Envirodyne study done by Army Corps of Engineer consultants found significant contamination at these areas, including the burn pit, and indicated that much more extensive investigations were needed. Eventually, the DoD agreed to fund a limited further investigation of the burn pit and fuel oil tank areas (not the other areas). The investigation was done in 1991 by the Tracer Research Corporation, also U.S. Army Corps of Engineers consultants.
The Tracer Research Corporation results from the Darwin burn pit were sent to the city and county in early 1992. The soil gas survey methodology TRC used was intended as a precursor to more extensive studies; the report noted that “The soil gas survey is not intended to be a substitute for conventional methodology but rather to enable conventional methodologies to be used efficiently.” Still, significant (and in some cases alarming) levels of chlorinated compounds and/or “total volatile hydrocarbons” were fond. (PFAS was not included because this was before anyone knew about PFAS). The report concluded: “The isoconcentration contours for total hydrocarbons indicate possible source areas for subsurface contamination in the center of the Fire Training Pit and to the north of the Swanson cul-de-sac [near the fuel storage area]. Further investigations are needed to better define the source and extent of subsurface contamination.” (Italics added).
No further investigations were ever done, as far as we know. The Tracer Research Corporation study was never made public. I found it in an open records request.
