LAURA: Secretary Kenney,  thanks for joining me today.

SEC.

KENNY: Thank you for having me.

LAURA: So, in 2018 Art Schaap,   who has a dairy down in Clovis, Highland Dairy,  was notified by the Air Force that his dairy cows   and his family had been drinking contaminated  water.

This is water contaminated with PFAS.

Can   you remind us what are PFAS and why should humans  and, say, dairy cows not be exposed to this?

SEC.

KENNEY: Sure.

PFAS are a set of chemicals  that are used in sort of everyday applications,   things like your outdoor wear, your pots  and pans, that have non-stick coatings.

They're used in a lot of household items…  even stain resistant carpets have, typically,   PFAS coatings on them.

Those coatings, or that  chemical, that group of chemical, of which there   are thousands that fall into that category, are  now known to cause certain types of developmental   disorders as well as cancers.

So, they have a  whole host of toxicity associated with them,   when they get into the body or into a cow.

And  they're really hard to expel, almost impossible.

So, they bio-accumulate, meaning they just  continue to build up and build up in the body   and they also do that in the environment.

They  build up and build up and they don't break down.

Different than, say, like, an oil spill, which  microbes eventually will break that down.

PFAS chemicals just live in the environment.

That's why they're called forever chemicals.

LAURA: And so, the PFAS that made its way into  the Highland Dairy Water, that was coming from   Cannon Air Force Base.

What kind of, what  do we know about that exposure, like,   where that was coming from?

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah, so, the other application of   PFAS chemicals is, they're really good at putting  out fires.

So, you'll hear a lot of PFAS used as a   fire fighting foam.

And, the Defense Department  is one of the, has been one of the largest   consumers of this fire-fighting foam.

So,  Cannon Air Force Base does a lot of practice   fire-extinguishing activities or drills  and those firefighting foams for years,   that contain PFAS, were being washed into  the groundwater under Cannon Air Force Base,   that groundwater then continues to migrate.

It  moves underground.

It migrates off base and then   moved under Art Schaap's farm, where he  was pulling up that groundwater to feed   and water his cows and that's the exposure  pathway that those PFAS chemicals took.

The PFAS in Clovis continues to move and it  continues to be there and it's significantly high   concentrations of PFAS in that drinking water.

LAURA: And so the state has been trying for   years now to hold the Air Force, the U.S.  military, the Pentagon accountable.

What efforts   have you attempted and where do things stand, in  terms of the military cleaning up this pollution,   stopping it from continuing?

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah, it's a good question   and I think before we ever tried anything other  than diplomacy and seeking the Air Force take   responsibility for the pollution cause,  the Air Force sued the State of New Mexico   to prevent the state from requiring cleanup.

So, the first thing that happened was they   determined that they polluted the groundwater  and then they sued the State of New Mexico   to say, “We're not going to take responsibility  and clean this up.” That's obviously unacceptable   and we, then, the state of New  Mexico sued the Defense Department   to require them to comply with state law,  since that time the litigation on both sides   has stalled but that hasn't stalled the State  of New Mexico from taking responsibility   for the PFAS contamination.

To date, we've  probably spent about six million dollars   making sure that drinking water is safe, both  public water as well as private water wells.

And then, we've also tried to delineate, meaning  identify where the plume is under Clovis to make   sure that other dairies and the drinking  water wells are safe.

And then we've also   hired a contractor to do the groundwater modeling  to figure out the relative speed at which it's   moving and ultimately to do the cleanup.

So,  in short, the Department of Defense has done   pretty much nothing and the State of New Mexico  has picked up the tab and taken responsibility   for the communities it's polluting.

LAURA: So, this contamination has reached   various wells in the Clovis area, but Mr.  Schaap at Highland Dairy is kind of maybe   the biggest impact.

And we visited him back in  2021, last spring, to talk to him and saw his,   you know, thousands of cows at his dairy that he  was unable to sell the milk from anymore.

But,   you know, had kept these thousands of cows  alive.

What's now become of those cows?

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah, so those 3,600 cows over  time, some of them simply just died of old age   and he wasn't able to sell his milk,  but he still had to maintain those cows   to see if the PFAS levels would naturally  decline, is what I understand he was keeping   them alive for.

As of today all 3,600 cows have  now been euthanized.

So, those cows are no longer   living and those and the cows today  are being composted on site at his farm   and we're working with him to make sure that  those hazardous carcasses are properly managed   so that PFAS doesn't continue  to move through the environment,   but we actually take it out of the environment.

LAURA: So, let's talk about that a little bit   about cows being and cow carcasses now being  hazardous waste.

How does that change how   and where these bodies can be buried or disposed  of?

I mean, it's a difficult conversation to have,   but I'd like to understand kind of the….

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah, I think it is a really   difficult conversation and, I,  you know, as somebody who's been   in the environmental business as a regulator for  25 plus years, working on hazardous waste issues,   I've never encountered a scenario  like this before, where a, you know,   a cow has become a hazardous waste.

It's one,  not something I'd ever want to deal with and   two not something I've ever had to deal with and  many regulators haven't had to deal with this,   but I think it's going to be something  we're going to see more of unfortunately.

But, those cows those carcasses contain PFAS in  an amount that exceeds the EPA health advisory   limit of 70 parts per trillion.

It exceeds  what New Mexico considers a hazardous waste   and therefore we want to make sure that those  cows, upon their decomposition, that we clean up   the soil and any remaining materials and there's  going to be.

We're seeking information on what the   proper disposal would be, long-term disposal,  but it's likely going to be something like   scooping everything up taking it  to a hazardous waste landfill or   taking all that soil and organic matter that's  remaining to a hazardous waste incinerator   and disposing of it, to break down  that really hard chemical of PFAS   into something that is no longer PFAS.

That's what the incinerator would do.

So,   there's a few methods on the horizon  that might be right, but we're seeking   information to make sure we get it right.

LAURA: So, are the cows just being   held on the property, or?

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah, it's a horrific scene.

The cows have been placed into ditches where they  will be, where they will continue to decompose.

Art Schaap is covering those cows  with topsoil and things to make   sure that the smell and the migration of the  material doesn't get out of those ditches.

So, it's pretty horrific.

It's a  pretty terrible event and one that we   were hoping that the cows would metabolize the  PFAS, but after multiple years the levels have   not come down.

They’re magnitudes higher than  what we would have expected or hoped them to be,   to treat them as more of like a solid waste.

LAURA: So, this sounds horrible and also   expensive.

Who's paying for all of this?

SEC.

KENNEY: Once again, New Mexicans are   paying for this.

As I said earlier, the Department  of Defense hasn't done anything outside of the   fence line of Cannon Air Force Base to really  take responsibility for the long-term cleanup   or management of these hazardous carcasses.

So, we  stepped in.

The New Mexico Environment Department   and bringing 850 thousand dollars to the table.

And I want you and the viewers to know that eight   hundred and fifty thousand dollars is money that  we have for hazardous emergencies throughout the   State of New Mexico.

So, by putting that money  into managing this singularly large event,   we have a lot less money as a state to respond to  other hazardous emergencies throughout the state   and the way that that money gets replenished is  through penalties, in which we assess against   hazardous waste mismanagement.

So, in other words  we have less money for those other emergencies   until we have emergencies where we penalize  people.

It's kind of a double-edged sword.

But, so New Mexico is bringing 850,000 to make  sure that they're properly disposed of and then   Art Schaap will be responsible for bringing money  to the table as well for something that he didn't   cause, but became a victim to, right?

LAURA: What about the U.S. Department   of Agriculture?

Are they a part of this process,   in regulating or reimbursing?

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah, so the USDA   has a program in which they will  reimburse a dairy farmer if they're,   if their cows become adulterated with chemicals  like PFAS.

That's fairly new and this is the   first time that I'm aware of, in the country,  that a dairy farmer is using that program for   specifically PFAS.

And so, Art Schaap has made his  application.

We've signed off on that application   to the USDA to seek funding, to  be reimbursed for the dairy cows.

So, that's, that program is underway and  something that I think Art will be successful   in finding some funding there.

LAURA: So, we know that the military,   the U.S. Military has contaminated sites across  the nation and across the world with PFAS.

Are other states dealing with anything similar?

What do their, kind of, relationships look like   when it comes to these cleanup issues?

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah, it's a great question and it's   an interesting answer, in that, you know, about  200 miles roughly east of Cannon Air Force Base   is Reese Air Force Base in Texas.

And when you  look at the dichotomy of what I'm about to say,   it really is mind boggling.

The Air Force is  cleaning up Reese Air Force Base, treating PFAS   as a hazardous material.

They're doing it with  the state of Texas in a collaborative way.

When we asked them to do the same thing here  in New Mexico, we were met with a federal   lawsuit to try to stop us from preventing,  to try to stop us from requiring cleanup.

So, we have two air force bases both with PFAS  contamination, one where the federal government   is cooperating with the state of Texas and one  where the federal government is suing New Mexico   to ensure that there's no responsibility.

And  then, there's bases all throughout the United   States that are in varying stages of cleanup.

We  look at that.

We follow that nationally.

The Navy   just paid for a wastewater treatment plant with  the state of Pennsylvania to clean up PFAS.

We   don't have that here and in fact when we've asked  the Department of Defense for their contracts   as to what they plan to do in Clovis, we were  met with a response that we would have to,   that was not information we were privy to as the  state of New Mexico.

And we filed a freedom of   information act request to try to get that from  the Department of Defense, just so we could be   better stewards of New Mexico's taxpayer dollars.

LAURA: So, why does the federal government,   why is New Mexico treated differently?

SEC.

KENNEY: Yeah and you know,   I'm left with a very short list of answers  to that question.

It's not technical.

It's   not legal.

It's not scientific.

So what does  it look like?

It looks like there's a state,   New Mexico, that's rural, that tends to  have, tends to be a poorer state and we   tend to have a browner population.

And,  I think it's an environmental injustice   or a textbook environmental justice issue that  New Mexico is not getting an equitable treatment   compared to other states across the country.

And, I think that sends some real concern   to me as a regulator that  the federal government is   not practicing what it preaches.

LAURA: Well, Secretary Kenney,   thank you for having this really  hard conversation with me today.

SEC.

KENNEY: I appreciate it.

Thank you  for covering this and glad to be here.