Air Force Refuses to Clean Up Drinking Water After Polluting With Chemicals

The U.S. Air Force has argued that it cannot fix a water pollution problem in Tucson, Arizona, because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. According to the Air Force, it cannot take steps to depollute drinking water in the area that became contaminated with a series of “forever chemicals,” including an organic compound produced by industrial processes known as trichloroethylene, which does not break down naturally. 

The Air Force cites a ruling made in June that saw the overturning of the 40-year-old Chevron defense. Under the old doctrine, judges were required to defer to federal agencies in the event that laws that would be enforced by said agencies were ambiguous. The Air Force claims that without the decades-old statute, the Environmental Protection Agency is no longer able to solve its own pollution problems. 

What does this mean for the people of Tucson, Arizona? Well, it looks as though it means their drinking water will remain contaminated for a while longer. 

Air Force bases are responsible for the contamination waters, too, according to a report by The Guardian – but Environmental Protection Agency officials and some legal experts have suggested that the Air Force is inaccurately citing changes in the law to avoid taking responsibility for the problem. 

According to Deborah Ann Sivas, the director of the Stanford University Environmental Law Clinic, the Air Force may be attempting to expand the scope of the law. 

“It feels almost like an intimidation tactic, but it will be interesting to see if others take this approach and it bleeds over,” Sivas said. 

The debate follows an order by the Environmental Protection Agency in May that required both the National Guard and the Air Force to develop a new plan designed to address pollution. Between the two branches of the U.S. military, the plan would have cost as much as $25 million – and while it seems like a lot, it’s actually just 0.1% of the Air Force’s annual budget. 

Could it be that the Air Force simply doesn’t have the funding it needs from the Biden administration, and might these delay tactics might simply be an effort to see if a new administration could step in and find the funding elsewhere? It’s hard to say for now – but what we do know is that there is a huge problem within the Department of Defense. A report published in 2023 found that at least 245 military bases in the United States had either contaminated or threatened to contaminate drinking water supplies with “forever chemicals.”