Blasting Penn State and the state government, Benner Township property owners are demanding broader protections under a draft agreement to address “forever chemicals” found at State College Regional Airport and in their private water wells.
A remediation proposal negotiated by the university and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection wouldn’t cover consequences like medical monitoring and diminished property values, attorneys for affected homeowners told DEP in a 19-page response last week.
The lawyers alleged Penn State broke the state Clean Streams Law — meant to protect the environment and public health — by “discharging a toxic pollutant to the groundwater” from the university-owned and -operated airport. In neighboring Walnut Grove Estates, residents believe the DEP-PSU proposal fails to hold the university fully accountable, according to the written input.
“To say that the WGE residents feel abandoned by both the commonwealth and the university for a situation they had no hand in causing, but have been affected by on a physical, emotional, financial and biometrically cellular level, is an understatement,” neighborhood attorneys Christine Line and Mark Cuker wrote to DEP.
Residents want more complete support for their hardships, according to the filing.
Asked for comment, Penn State would not speak to individual public comments, saying state law designates DEP to respond to written feedback. The university has said it followed all regulations for a firefighting foam — aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF — eyed as a likely contamination source.
Like other aviation facilities across the country, the airport used AFFF for years under a federal mandate, including in test exercises. The foam contains toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, the class of so-called forever chemicals found above government thresholds for drinking water in almost 40 residential wells near the airport.
Most of the wells are in Walnut Grove Estates, off Big Hollow Road just south of the State College Regional runways. While the remediation proposal identifies Penn State as “a responsible person” concerning “the release or threatened release of PFAS,” details in the document show that Penn State “wants to be obstructive and deny accountability,” Line said.
“The contamination didn’t walk over to the wells itself. It got there because of irresponsible handling of the AFFF,” she told StateCollege.com.
She and Cuker are among more than a dozen commenters who responded to the remediation proposal during a 60-day feedback period that ended Feb. 12, DEP spokeswoman Megan Lehman said. The department will post all the input on its PFAS-investigation webpage, she said.
DEP would not speak immediately to individual public comments. The department will address them in a forthcoming response, weigh whether to amend the proposal and discuss any possible adjustments with Penn State, Lehman said via email. It wasn’t clear how long that process might take.
“DEP will continue to work with the responsible party (PSU) and affected residents as we move forward to finalize and implement” the agreement, Lehman wrote. The 33-page proposal is known formally as a consent order and agreement, or COA.
Concerns Persist over Health, Financial Impacts
First reported by StateCollege.com in November, the proposed COA would have Penn State pay about $565,000 to DEP for some past response costs. University obligations would include further investigation of the contamination, an action plan and clean-up expected under state law and oversight.
Among the provisions, Penn State would sample and maintain the advanced water-filtration systems that DEP installed to remove PFAS at affected homes. The university could suspend the upkeep under several scenarios, including the construction of a public water line or DEP approval of the in-home systems as a final fix.
Line said residents have yet to determine the contamination’s full effect on their property values and could shoulder “all the financial burden” for clean drinking water. She said medical monitoring is another priority for those worried about longtime exposure to PFAS, which may be tied to an elevated risk of some cancers, metabolic issues and other health problems.
Blood tests have shown highly elevated PFAS levels in many residents, Line said. It’s unknown how long they might have been drinking PFAS-tainted water.
“There have been multiple incidents of sudden death in the community. There have been thyroid issues,” Line said.
Penn State “really should have been proactive instead of reactive. And as a good neighbor, they should have reached out and said, ‘We want to work with’” the community, she added.
The proposed COA also fails to address soil contamination that keeps residents from harvesting fruits and vegetables, and it wouldn’t shield property owners from liability, attorneys noted. They claimed “investigatory inadequacies” and that DEP and the university didn’t alert residents fast enough to the PFAS hazard.
DEP began checking wells at Walnut Groves Estates in December 2021, more than two years after it started investigating PFAS discoveries near the airport.
Penn State has not said publicly whether it believes the airport fouled residential water supplies. DEP indicated that more investigation could turn up additional PFAS sources. In use since the 1940s for industrial and consumer products, the man-made chemicals are known for their persistence — and prevalence — in nature and in the human body.
Elected Officials, Advocates Register Feedback
Other commenters on the proposed COA include Benner Township supervisors; the Sierra Club Moshannon Group; and Jason Floyd, a hydrogeologist working with affected homeowners, according to documents shared with StateCollege.com.
Township supervisors want expert-positioned monitoring wells to help track the contamination. Among their requests, they asked that the township be permitted to review and comment on Penn State’s action plans.
Supervisor Kathy Evey, in her individual remarks, urged an immediate strategy “to protect the entire township from becoming a hazardous community.”
“I am very concerned for the residents at (Walnut Grove Estates) as well as every resident in Benner Township,” she wrote. “It is unconscionable to think about the stress, health, welfare and possible loss of life that these residents have been living with for way too long.”
In his letter, Floyd cited a laboratory analysis. It found PFAS in a well at Walnut Grove Estates closely matched contamination in soil at the airport property and specific contaminants that originate from AFFF, the firefighting foam, Floyd wrote.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club Moshannon Group said the COA should provide for additional cleanup if PFAS discoveries stretch beyond the current investigation area. Surveys by the environmental group identified PFAS compounds in airport stormwater runoff flowing to Spring Creek and Big Hollow, the organization wrote to university President Neeli Bendapudi last July.
That points to defects in the airport’s stormwater system, Moshannon Group Executive Committee Chair Doug Mason wrote. In a reply in August, a Penn State administrator said he shared the material with an internal environmental team and outside consultants for analysis.
James Crandall, senior director of university Environmental Health and Safety, also flagged a report indicating other possible sources of PFAS in Spring Creek, including wastewater treatment plants.
Timing Uncertain for Next Steps
The state Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act governs DEP negotiations with Penn State. If the department reworks the proposed consent order and agreement, residents may be in for a wait: Lehman said the law doesn’t specify a timeframe for reviewing public feedback or making revisions.
Nor does it provide for a second period for public input, she said.
Penn State has not granted press interviews on the contamination matter, instead communicating through written statements. Last year, the university told StateCollege.com it’s “committed to adhering to the final consent order and its requirements.” Penn State also is “seeking to hold accountable the companies that sold and profited from PFAS-containing products.”
In June, the university announced litigation against manufacturers of PFAS detected in its own drinking-water supplies. For tap water at University Park, Penn State uses granular activated carbon, a filtration medium that removes PFAS.
Attorneys for Walnut Grove Estates spotlighted makers of PFAS products, too. Writing to DEP, attorneys said manufacturers “consistently cautioned users that AFFF (the firefighting foam) should only be discharged to wastewater treatment plants.”
But it appears the State College airport discharged PFAS-containing foam to the ground from the mid-1980s until 2006, the attorneys wrote.
“Throughout this time, Penn State should have known better.”
Adam Smeltz is a StateCollege.com contributor. Reach him at [email protected].
