116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
State tells Eastern Iowa Airport to expand 'forever chemical' search
PFAS found in nearly two-thirds of Swisher wells over 2 years
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SWISHER — A tiny but growing town just south of Cedar Rapids is infested by toxic chemicals that persist indefinitely in the ground.
The problem might have started decades ago.
Nearly two-thirds of private Swisher wells that have been tested in the past two years are tainted by PFAS, a group of synthetic compounds commonly known as "forever chemicals." All the drinking water that serves the town of about 900 in northern Johnson County comes from private wells — there is no municipal water supply.
The federal government announced new restrictions for some of the chemicals in public drinking water in 2023, recognizing that there is perhaps no amount of PFAS that is safe to consume. Long-term exposure has been linked to cancers and other ailments.
The precise source of Swisher's contamination has not yet been determined, but there is a leading suspect: The Eastern Iowa Airport about 2 miles north of town.
A team of University of Iowa researchers discovered heavy PFAS contamination near the airport in 2020. The airport since has surmised that PFAS-laden foam that was used to extinguish two fiery plane crashes in the 1970s caused most of the contamination.
The city of Cedar Rapids, which owns the airport, also discarded "biosolids" from its wastewater treatment plant on crop fields the airport rents to farmers for about six years.
One private well on an acreage just south of the airport had PFAS concentrations that were at least 60 times the new drinking-water limits imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The airport paid $1.1 million to buy the home, with an agreement from the homeowners to indemnify it from future litigation tied to the contamination.
The airport also installed treatment systems in four other nearby homes to remove PFAS from drinking water. It also offered them to four homeowners who declined.
The airport has not yet provided the same assistance to Swisher residents.
The situation is the subject of a contaminated sites investigation by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which has directed the airport to determine the extent of the problem.
The airport "has been actively working with IDNR since 2023," Marty Lenss, its director, told The Gazette. "These collaborative efforts continue."
The department partially rebuffed a plan the airport submitted late last year for testing groundwater in the area. The proposal focused on groundwater closer to the airport. The Iowa DNR said the testing should be more widespread, citing the Swisher contaminated wells.
"Expanding the search area will allow a better understanding of where PFAS chemicals are not found — potentially more important at the present time than finding more wells that do," the department wrote in January.
But that has the potential to expose the airport to greater liability for the contamination.
Farther away, in two residential developments along Coralville Lake, the state has also found contaminated wells.
Testing in Swisher
Swisher has no centralized water supply, so its residents rely on a patchwork of private wells, many of which were constructed before the 1980s when the state began tracking them. They range in depth of tens of feet to hundreds. Some of them serve one home. Some serve dozens.
There are no reliable records that document all of the town's wells. There might be between 75 and 125 within city limits, said Ethan Turben-Fuhrman, an environmental health specialist for Johnson County Public Health.
The city told residents via Facebook in early 2023 that free testing was available from the county.
"The city has been notified of another well testing positive for PFAS," the Feb. 14, 2023, post said. "This brings the total to three within city limits and one outside of city limits.“
Testing requests swelled thereafter, and the county now has used state funding to test a total of 54 of those wells for PFAS. Nearly two-thirds of them — 35 — were found to be contaminated.
Notably, the chemicals have infiltrated deep wells in town. Shallower wells are most often affected by the type of surface contamination that happened at the airport, but county records show that Swisher wells as deep as 455 feet have PFAS.
It's unclear whether the deep wells might have defects that allow shallower water to infiltrate them, or whether the chemicals have penetrated to that full depth.
The discovery of the Swisher contamination coincided with a referendum to build a public water system for the town. The $19 million project was put to a vote to enable future growth of the city and to support firefighters — they have to transport water to the town to do their jobs.
The referendum failed dramatically. About 84 percent of voters rejected it in March 2023, largely because of its price tag.
That was just weeks after the city notified residents of the potential PFAS contamination but before the larger scope of the problem was revealed with testing.
Still, there is relatively little concern among residents about it.
"This hasn't been brought up at any City Council meeting for over a year," council member Kody Pudil told The Gazette.
His father, Rob, who owns Affordable Soft Water in town, has installed about 20 treatment systems in Swisher homes to remove PFAS.
Rob Pudil said there was initial shock about the widespread contamination, but it gave way to complacency. Older residents had been drinking the water for most of their lives and didn't seem to develop health problems. Many didn't even seek tests of their wells.
"I've been living on this well for 50 years," Rob Pudil said. "I'm not going to bother with it."
One of his customers, Heidi Hromidko, had been suspicious that something had sickened people in town before residents knew about the PFAS.
She and her husband, Chad, live in the home her now-deceased parents built about 30 years ago on the east side of town. She was among those whose water tests revealed PFAS contamination, and she promptly paid about $700 to install a treatment system for their kitchen water. The filters cost another $300 each year.
"My dad got cancer, then our neighbor got cancer," Hromidko said. "We joked: 'What's going on with our block?'"
Hromidko voted in favor of the municipal water system project and thinks it would have alleviated the town’s contamination problem.
It's possible that a town well might suffer the same contamination issues, but two wells that serve newer housing developments on the west and north sides of town don't have PFAS, according to Iowa DNR data. They are 490 feet and 560 feet deep.
Investigation will take years
The Eastern Iowa Airport said it will take "appropriate action" in regard to mitigating the contamination in Swisher if its investigation shows the firefighting foam is the cause.
"Being a good neighbor and community member is important to us," Lenss said.
The airport has about 3,300 acres of land on the southwest side of Cedar Rapids.
Heavy PFAS contamination has been found in monitoring wells on the property and in stormwater leaving it, which eventually flows to the Cedar and Iowa rivers.
The airport's early testing in 2021 found PFAS concentrations that were thousands of times higher than the federal drinking water safety limit in groundwater and hundreds of times higher in stormwater.
Consultants the airport hired to help evaluate the contamination — Foth Infrastructure and Environment, of Cedar Rapids — point to two potential sources.
There was PFAS-containing firefighting foam that the airport used when it was formerly required by federal regulators, along with Cedar Rapids biosolids that were applied from 2006 to 2012 on land the airport owns.
Foth has reported to the Iowa DNR that it believes the biosolids — which can contain PFAS-laden waste from residents — were a minor contributor to the contamination.
Instead the firm pointed to two plane crashes in the 1970s that required large amounts of the foam.
In August 1970, a U.S. Navy pilot who performed in an air show neglected to activate his landing wheels and skidded — on fire — off a runway and into a cornfield. The pilot ejected safely, but it took about a half hour for firefighters to extinguish the fire.
In March 1979, an intoxicated pilot crashed a small cargo plane during takeoff in snowy conditions, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report. The plane crashed about 100 yards south of the airport and ignited. The pilot and a co-pilot died.
"That's 50 years these chemicals have been there, and we only just discovered it five years ago," said David Cwiertny, director of the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination at the UI.
He added: "If this is the source, that gives you a sense for how long water in that region, the ecosystem in that region, and the people that rely on water in that region could have been impacted. They're called 'forever chemicals.' It's not like this problem goes away."
The airport also regularly used the foam for training exercises. Lenss said the foam has not been on-site since 2021.
It's unclear when testing will reveal the extent of the PFAS plume in the groundwater and whether it migrated to Swisher.
Contamination investigations of this scope can take more than a decade to conclude, said Matt Graesch, a senior environmental specialist for the Iowa DNR who is monitoring and guiding the airport investigation.
He told the consultants in January that the airport should expand its testing and expedite it.
"I'm trying to lead them down the path to find the answer quicker," he told The Gazette. "What the DNR needs to know is where the contamination isn't, to define the area where it is."
It would likely be impossible to eradicate PFAS in the groundwater of such a large area, Graesch said, so treatment systems or alternative sources of water might be solutions.
Who will pay for that is unclear. The airport hopes federal funding will help, and it might join ongoing litigation against the chemical manufacturers that seek vast sums of money.
"I understand why the airport had to use these things — I don't fault them," Cwiertny said of the foam. "Lots of airports are in this situation."
State testing has discovered PFAS contamination in dozens of public water supplies in Iowa, many of which appear to be unrelated to foam.
The 3M Company agreed to spend more than $800,000 to drill new wells for the Eastern Iowa city of Camanche, which lies across the Mississippi River from one of its production facilities in Illinois that federal officials said released PFAS into the air or with its wastewater and sludge for decades.
The state testing has revealed the river itself likely has significant contamination.
Discoveries at Coralville Lake
About 7 miles from the airport, two community water supplies at Coralville Lake have PFAS contamination, recent state tests reveal.
The reservoir has a vast shoreline with some of Johnson County's most valuable homes. One has a baseball field in its front yard, with dugouts and stadium lights.
The area is dotted with neighborhoods with drinking water that is managed by homeowner associations. Last month, tests found PFAS in the well that supplies North Twin View Heights and its roughly 180 residents.
Coralville Lake Manor, with about 170 residents, also is affected. Several of those residents who talked to The Gazette in recent weeks were unaware of the contamination and had never heard of PFAS at all.
"You about have to be a goddamn rocket scientist to understand all of this," said Al Welsch, who helps lead the homeowner association.
The association recently sent notice to residents about the contamination and is awaiting results from a subsequent test. Based on the first results, the association would not be required to treat the water. The PFAS was detectable but below a federal limit.
But those concentrations can shift. Welsch and his wife, Brenda, fear the costs of treatment and hope the first test results were merely a mistake.
They've lived in their modest home for about four decades and aren't worried about the water affecting their health. "If we had a new baby I might be a little concerned," Brenda Welsch said.
It is doubtful The Eastern Iowa Airport's PFAS contamination has traveled that far through groundwater to affect the neighborhoods of Coralville Lake, Cwiertny said. Instead, he suspects tainted water in the Iowa River that flows through the reservoir has infiltrated the ground.
Contaminated stormwater from the airport flows through creeks to that river, but that is not the sole source of river PFAS. Wastewater treatment plants are major sources of the chemicals in the state's rivers, Cwiertny said.
Drinking water that is contaminated often has multiple PFAS chemicals. Researchers have tried to match contaminations with their sources by comparing how much of each chemical is in the samples, but that can be difficult. The chemicals can move through groundwater at different speeds, for example, which alters their concentrations.
That applies to Swisher water, too. Is it PFAS from the airport?
"It's a reasonable assumption for people to have, but it's not easy to definitely prove," Cwiertny said.
Comments: (319) 368-8541; jared.strong@thegazette.com
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