LANSING, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — All 19 commercial service airports in Michigan will soon have firefighting equipment that will reduce the risk of PFAS exposure thanks to a new grant program.
According to an official press release, the new grant comes by way of a partnership between the airports, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), the Michigan Aeronautics Commission (MAC), and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), through the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team (MPART).
“All of those airports have a federal requirement, amongst many others, to test and ensure that their firefighting capabilities are ready to go at a moments notice,” Deputy Administrator for MDOT’s Office of Aeronautics Bryan Budds said. “Part of that includes the foam proportioning systems that are included on Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Trucks (ARFF), which usually have a water system and a foam system. Usually, that testing is done by spraying the foam…sometimes historically onto the ground to make sure the foam is proportioning correctly, which of course, raises a number of concerns with PFAS being in some of those firefighting foams.”
The new equipment, such as the Ecologic System manufactured by E-One, will allow the vehicles to be tested without having to spray the foam.
“Basically, what it’s doing is testing the water proportioning system within the fire truck to make sure that, if it was foam flowing through the system, that it would be proportioned correctly,” Budds said.
The MAC approved the grant program earlier this year, which essentially eliminates an avenue for PFAS to enter the environment.
“Just recently within the past year, the federal rules that govern that sort of testing had been adjusted to allow this new equipment to meet the standard,” Budds said. “We sent a letter to those folks for some tweaks to those rules so that the airports in the state wouldn’t have to test the foam by spraying it on the ground. Knowing that that testing standard was tweaked, the State put up some funds in the grant program to acquire the systems quickly so airports didn’t have to keep testing the old way.”
The grant program is partially in response to growing awareness of PFAS chemicals in the environment by MPART.
“This was one of the subgroups that was established under MPART to look at some of the airport-specific issues and concerns,” Budds said. “Quickly, this became one of the things that the airport working group looked at right off the bat and said, ‘hey, how can we address this issue,’ which led to some of the outreach to our federal partners to get some of the rules tweaked.”
The State grant program covers all airports that have a foam testing requirement.
“Obviously, there’s a number of other airports in the state, about 200 or so, that are not commercial service airports, so there’s always the concern about smaller general aviation airports and whether or not they use foam, which they don’t,” Budds said. “Any airport that has the requirement to have foam is now covered under this new program.”
Each qualifying airport will receive around $25,000 for the new eco-friendly equipment. At this time, nine of the 19 commercial airports have received the upgrades. The remaining airports are expecting to be equipped within the next two months.
