The Department of Defense has quietly delayed its cleanup of harmful “forever chemicals” at nearly 140 military installations across the country, according to a list of sites analyzed by The New York Times.
The Pentagon has been one of the most intensive users of these chemicals, which are also known as PFAS and are a key ingredient in firefighting foam. For decades, crews at U.S. military bases would train to battle flames by lighting jet-fuel fires, then putting them out with large amounts of foam, which would leach into the soil and groundwater.
In 2017, military communities nationwide began to report alarming levels of the chemicals in their drinking water. A growing body of research has linked PFAS exposure to serious health concerns including certain types of cancer as well as child developmental and fertility issues.
The Pentagon’s new timeline would delay cleanup around military sites by nearly a decade in some cases, according to the latest list, which is dated in March and was posted publicly in recent weeks without an announcement. The delays vary by site. They add up to a significant revision from the Pentagon’s earlier cleanup timetable, which had been released three months earlier, in December 2024, in the final days of the Biden administration.
The Department of Defense, which the Trump administration now refers to as the Department of War, did not respond to requests for comment.
The new timetable comes amid possible cuts to funding for toxic-site cleanups even as the military struggles to address the contamination crisis. The Defense Department has spent $2.6 billion since 2017 to begin investigating the extent of contamination. In some of the worst cases, it has distributed clean drinking water to affected communities.
PFAS, which is short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are known as forever chemicals because they are so long-lasting in the environment. The Defense Department has said in the past that its wider cleanup effort, which has yet to begin, will take years and billions of dollars to complete.
Now, some communities may need to wait longer.
The Defense Department’s new delays affect some of the preparatory work that must be completed before actual cleanup can begin — for example, the work to identify the most effective cleanup strategies. This preparatory work itself can take several years. As a result, at some of the sites, cleanup might not begin until at least 2039, according to the new timetable.
According to the Defense Department’s list, the preparatory work has been pushed back for about 25% of the nearly 600 military sites with known PFAS releases. At those locations, the work was delayed by an average of about five years compared with the December 2024 timetable.
Officials in communities near the affected military sites said they have been caught unawares.
© 2025 The New York Times Company