It will take decades for the Defense Department to remediate sites contaminated with “forever chemicals” because of limits in existing technology, a senior department official told a Senate panel Thursday.
“Based on what we know today, it will take years to fully define our nationwide cleanup challenges and probably decades before cleanup is complete,” said Richard G. Kidd, who oversees environmental issues in the department’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Sustainment.
Only 60 of the roughly 600 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, actively used on the U.S. market can be measured, he told the Senate’s Homeland Security and ...