By admin 
It’s been almost five years since Brandi and Brad Hyatt found out the well at their home next to an Army base in Washington is contaminated with so-called “forever chemicals.”
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They started using bottled water for everything from making coffee to rinsing off toothbrushes. The couple even carted their two small children across town to bathe at a gym so they couldn’t accidentally swallow contaminated bathwater.
The Army installed a filter last year, but the well remains contaminated. The kids will be long grown by the time the military provides a permanent fix, now delayed until after 2042.
Hundreds of military bases have been putting off cleanup of toxic PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, for years, according to a new USA TODAY analysis of military records. The latest round of delays, which the Pentagon posted in an obscure corner of its website in May, has pushed some deadlines out decades, or removed them altogether.
For decades, the military has extinguished fires using foams containing toxic PFAS. These chemicals can then seep into soil and groundwater, where they persist without breaking down, increasing the chance of certain cancers in people who drink from contaminated wells.
The military did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for an estimate of how many people the delays affect, but the tally could easily total tens of thousands of neighbors considering how many sites have been delayed.
The Hyatts, who live down the street from the U.S. Army’s Yakima Training Center, had no idea about the delay in their cleanup until USA TODAY called them.
“They do not tell us anything,” Brandi Hyatt said.
The only clue that anything changed appeared behind a link buried on the Pentagon’s website, where it publishes the cleanup timelines for more than 700 military installations. USA TODAY has compiled those reports – many of them now deleted – going back to 2021, observing at least 1,000 instances where cleanup times changed over the past five years without a formal announcement.
The latest delays, posted in May, are the most drastic, averaging a decade. USA TODAY has gathered the timeline details in this searchable data dashboard.
MAP: Have military sites near me delayed PFAS cleanup?
If you cannot see a graphic, click here.
Delays start piling up in 2025
Nearly three-quarters of the sites – over 500 – have been delayed at least once, and the delays are growing significantly longer.
USA TODAY’s analysis of the now-unavailable documents shows from 2021 to 2024, the military delayed cleanup timelines for a few dozen sites each quarter, usually by just a year or two. Timelines at a handful of sites would even speed up, also typically by a year or so.
Delays suddenly began to pile up in March 2025, when the Pentagon delayed over 150 sites at once. The newest records released, representing cleanup timelines as of September 2025, delayed the target dates for nearly 200 military sites as much as two decades into the future.
If you cannot see a graphic below, click here.
These timelines don’t even represent when each base’s neighbors can expect their property to be safe from forever chemicals. When cleaning up environmental contamination, the military follows the multistep Superfund program laid out by Congress. The timelines the military has been delaying are largely the “remedial investigation” step, which explores how far pollution has spread and how they might repair the damage. The final cleanup can’t even begin until they pass these milestones.
Sites with proven contamination delayed
These cleanup delays are happening even at military sites where the Pentagon has publicly confirmed forever chemicals are seeping into local water sources, USA TODAY found.
Water testing shows the chemicals can drain off-base and contaminate private wells and sources of municipal drinking water. Dayton, Ohio, Fort Worth, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona, are just a sampling of the cities that have filed lawsuits against the military claiming PFAS threatens their water sources.
USA TODAY’s analysis of available military test results on public and private drinking water shows wells around 73 bases have tested above the current EPA limit for forever chemicals in drinking water.
All but two of these bases have faced delays to their cleanup process, USA TODAY found.
At South Carolina’s McEntire Air National Guard Base, where one-third of water samples have tested above the EPA limit, the cleanup timeline has been delayed nearly a quarter-century from 2029 to 2053.
About 85% of samples at Biddle Air National Guard Base outside Philadelphia have tested above the EPA limit, but its cleanup has been delayed 19 years. And in Yakima, Washington, cleanup was delayed over 13 years even though more than 1,350 water samples taken from the Hyatts’ neighbors around the Army’s Yakima Training Center have tested higher than the EPA limit.
For Brandi Hyatt, moving into their three-bedroom home on a 2-acre lot felt like a dream come true. The couple and their two kids enjoyed a stream running through the backyard and views of snow-capped mountain peaks in the distance. Plus, the constant convoys of soldiers driving in and out of the base just down the street gave them a sense of security and pride.
Until 2021, when the Army knocked on the Hyatts’ door to test their well and found PFAS. Since moving in, she said at least five neighbors have died of cancer, and she developed a thyroid condition.
“This beautiful dream of raising your babies at the end of a sweet cul-de-sac with all these nice old neighbors,” Hyatt said, pausing. “To find out that dream is potentially killing you, it’s just really hard.”
What does the military say?
Dozens of members of Congress have sent letters to the War Department since last fall to express their concern about the delays. In the latest, sent July 21, Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, criticizes not just the delays but the way they’ve been happening.
“Instead of consulting with community leaders and announcing the delays to the public, the department instead chose to quietly remove the previous cleanup schedule from its website and publish new timelines,” Murray wrote. “This is ultimately a violation of trust between military leaders and their surrounding communities.”
The Pentagon did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment in time for publication.
However, an Army spokesperson said schedule changes are a natural part of the environmental cleanup process.
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“They reflect ongoing technical work, not a change in our commitment,” wrote Lt. Col. Orlandon Howard Howard in an email.
He described protecting drinking water as the first priority at the Yakima Training Center, adding that base officials maintain regular communication with the state and local community.
“The Army updated its timeline when it became evident that updated PFAS data, evolving U.S. EPA standards and site-specific complexity required the Army to perform additional fieldwork and analysis beyond what the earlier published timeline reflected,” Howard wrote.
Since the Superfund cleanup process typically takes many years, the military has previously said it’s taken “interim actions” such as providing bottled water or installing filtration systems near at least 55 military bases with the worst contamination.
“When our data indicates a risk, we act immediately to cut off that exposure path,” Howard wrote, noting the Army has installed 71 in-home filtration systems around the Yakima Training Center, with plans for dozens more. Plus, they’re providing bottled water to many of the Hyatts’ neighbors still waiting for a filter.
Across the country near Philadelphia, officials at the Biddle Air National Guard Base said the first phase of their investigation is wrapping up. Investigators said more soil and water sampling is required to fill in gaps in their data, but that can’t happen until the Air Force awards the base more funding. Meanwhile, its cleanup timeline has been delayed nearly two decades.
“We’ve been prioritizing interim actions across the nation, and we’re doing it at Biddle,” said William Myer, Biddle’s environmental restoration program manager, at a public meeting held July 16. “We’re actively doing a groundwater design to construct a groundwater treatment system.”
For the first time, the War Department’s quarterly update on May 21 included brief footnotes to explain why each base’s timeline was extended, including reasons such as the prioritization of higher-risk sites, a need for additional testing and severe weather.
The Pentagon has also added a note to its website that while the military “strives to maintain original schedules, shifts may occur due to unique factors encountered at some sites.”
USA TODAY obtained some of the military’s responses to the dozens of elected officials who have expressed concerns about the delays. The department’s responses generally echo the Army spokesperson’s comments, also blaming tougher EPA regulations and citing factors like funding availability and contractor problems.
How do delays affect the community?
Near Yakima, Washington, it took the Army nearly four years to install the Hyatts’ PFAS filtration system. It was the uncertainty during this “really long, frightening process,” that prompted Brandi Hyatt to found Pursue PFAS Free, a community group that gathers and shares information and advocates for clean water around a handful of military bases across the state.
“Everyone deserves to be safe in their homes,” she said. “I didn’t feel safe in my home anymore, and my neighbors didn’t.”
Some of her neighbors still aren’t safe, years after the contamination was discovered.
Greg Caron, who manages hazardous waste cleanup in the region for the state’s ecology department, points out that the 71 filtration systems the Army has installed to date is just half the count of nearby homes whose wells have tested over the EPA limits. His department wants the Army to be more proactive in testing and mitigating the contamination, so Caron said seeing an unannounced 13-year delay is worrisome.
“We felt like the 2028 goal was very optimistic – maybe too overly optimistic,” said Caron, who also was unaware of the delay until USA TODAY contacted him. “But any timeline that’s a decade long is troubling.”
A public review of the cleanup process cannot occur until the military finishes its investigation, Caron added.
“Until those documents are released, the public really has no insight, no view behind the curtain about what the Army is doing, except for what the Army chooses to share,” Caron said. “If the Army pushes back those deliverables for a dozen years, then where’s the public’s opportunity for real participation in this issue that affects them?”
The Army created a quarterly newsletter and PFAS website in response to criticism about poor communication in Yakima. Other sites, like Biddle Air National Guard Base in Pennsylvania, have regular meetings of advisory boards that allow neighbors to meet the military officials leading the cleanup. However, Joseph McGrath, who worked for decades at the Naval Air Station adjoining Biddle, said it’s not enough.
“From the day to day, we have no idea what’s going on,” McGrath told Biddle’s restoration manager during the advisory board’s July 16 meeting. “I don’t see anything on an active level.”
Hyatt had stronger words for her interactions with the military.
“The Army just gaslights everybody,” she told USA TODAY.
“I love our soldiers,” Hyatt said. “But I don’t have nice things to say about the way the Army has communicated with us.”
She described tense conversations with Army officials where she felt bullied and blamed for the delays holding up the installation of their home filtration system.
“Even when you get the system in, there’s still this sense of like, am I safe today?” Hyatt said, adding that a neighbor’s filter malfunctioned for months before they discovered the problem.
Now, Hyatt’s group wants the Army to truly provide space for her and her neighbors to sit at the decision-making table.
“Stop telling us what you’re going to do for us and how good it’s going to be, and let us be a part of what’s happening.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY Own: U.S. military bases delay cleanup of toxic “forever chemicals”
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Reporting by Austin Fast, USA TODAY / USA TODAY Own
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect