Nearly two months after more than 20,000 gallons of jet fuel were discharged from Joint Base Andrews into a vulnerable nearby creek, Maryland’s congressional delegation and state environmental officials are still trying to learn how it happened and what the effects will be to an already stressed Potomac River.
The jet fuel spill comes on the heels of a pipeline break this year that caused more than 240 million gallons of raw human sewage to spill into the Potomac, what officials called one of the worst environmental disasters in modern times after high levels of E. coli and other bacteria were found in parts of the river.
No drinking water in the Washington region has been affected by either incident, Maryland officials said. Still, there’s concern about the ecological impact to the iconic waterway that topped a national list of most endangered rivers in a recent report.
“There’s a limit to the amount of stress the Potomac River can absorb,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) in an interview. “We need to be focused on cleaning up the Potomac, and what we’re seeing is even more contamination and pollution. These spills are taking us in the wrong direction.”
The Maryland congressional delegation sent a letter on May 5 to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink asking about the March 23 discovery of odors and “a visible fuel sheen” on Piscataway Creek, a roughly 19-mile-long tributary of the Potomac River in Prince George’s County that is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Lawmakers said “subsequent correspondence” with Maryland environmental officials revealed that about 32,000 gallons of jet fuel had leaked over multiple days and locations at the base.
Of that amount, an estimated 10,000 gallons that had leaked in January and February were “reportedly contained” within the base’s fuel system, according to the lawmakers’ letter.
Another 22,000 gallons of jet fuel, however, were later “discharged into the environment, contaminating soils and nearby Piscataway Creek,” the lawmakers said in their letter.
A Joint Base Andrews spokesperson said in an email that the fuel entering the creek originated from one of the fuel distribution system rows, located about a mile from a pump house.
The contained portion of the leak was due to a faulty valve in the fuel pump house that allowed 10,000 gallons to escape amid fluctuations in temperature, the spokesperson said, adding that the valve was replaced in April.
The specific cause of the larger leak remains under investigation.
In their letter, the federal lawmakers raised concerns about containment berms installed in late March that state environmental officials said were insufficient to stop the spread of the fuel in the creek during moderate rainfall. They also questioned why there was a “notable delay” between when the base discovered the fuel leak on March 23 and when they notified state regulators with “full information about the complete spill volume” on April 8.
“There are two issues here,” Van Hollen said in an interview. “It poses an environmental risk. To know how to mitigate that risk, we need more information about the extent of the damage.
“Secondly, it’s important that the Air Force responds,” he said, noting that Joint Base Andrews has an oil permit from the Maryland Department of the Environment to handle fuel at the facility and as part of that agreement the base is legally required to disclose fuel leaks to the agency.
“They completely dropped the ball,” Van Hollen said. “There was a visible sign of contamination. They have not provided an explanation. We really need answers. We need to know the extent of the damage, and we need to know more about what happened. We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Van Hollen’s office said Meink has not responded to the letter from Maryland’s congressional leaders. An Air Force spokesperson said in an email that the secretary “will respond directly to the lawmakers to address the Air Force’s response efforts to the fuel leak.”
Joint Base Andrews is a sprawling campus of more than 7,400 acres in Camp Springs, Maryland, about 15 miles from downtown Washington. The base has about 17,500 personnel and is home to Air Force One. An underground fuel distribution network allows crews to refuel about 4,500 aircraft annually, according to a base spokesperson.
The military base has been the subject of environmental concerns related to firefighting foam stored on-site that contains “forever chemicals” that are commonly known as PFAS, according to environmental watchdogs.
A 2021 study from the Maryland Department of the Environment said the agency was “aware of a discharge of firefighting foam and the resulting fish kill investigation” in 2020, along with other data related to “PFAS releases to surface water” in a 2018 site inspection at the base.
The base sits at the headwaters of Piscataway Creek, which has long suffered from pollution due to high levels of PFAS, bacteria and sediment, environmental experts said. Because of the pollution, Maryland’s Department of the Environment issued advisories to the public that recommend eating limited quantities of fish caught in the waterway and in some cases avoiding certain species.
David Flores, vice president and general counsel for the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, said the jet fuel leak, coupled with the sewage spill into the Potomac River, is “really not good” for the waterway.
“This is another potential insult to a creek that’s experiencing the ongoing, continuous contamination from this base,” Flores said of the jet fuel. “This is terrible for the ecology and aquatic life.”
His group has studied the long-term effects of PFAS on Piscataway Creek and the base’s role. He said he wants to see the Air Force “held accountable to determine how extensive the spill is and how they’re remediating it.”
The Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that it sent personnel on March 25 to assess the condition of Piscataway Creek “and any off-site impacts.”
The agency’s preliminary assessment found that “containment measures were working as intended, no oil or oil sheen was observed migrating off site,” the statement said. The EPA, officials said, is “monitoring the status of the cleanup with regular reporting from the Air Force.”
Adam Ortiz, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, said in an interview that his office’s crews and inspectors are on-site daily at the base to monitor the cleanup of the spill. He said he remains concerned about how the situation was handled and is seeking more details from Air Force officials.
“We don’t know where it all is,” Ortiz said of the spilled jet fuel. “We know a lot has gone into the creek. Some of it was contained, but some of it was not. We have to know how much is in the ground. We have to try to track every single gallon to make sure it is not a threat to the public health or the environment.”
Ortiz said the mandatory reporting required by law from the base to the state’s environmental agency was “incomplete and late” — a move he called “a serious concern.”
In an April 15 report, inspectors from Maryland’s Department of the Environment wrote that the base’s “efforts to properly control, contain, and clean up the release of fuel have been minimal and insufficient.”
Ortiz said, “We’re now at a point of catching up to figure out how much has escaped and how much has gotten into the waterway.”
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