For weeks, high-level discussions between federal and state environmental officials and the Defense Department have produced no solutions about how to treat a Harford County town's contaminated drinking water.
Military training exercises at Aberdeen Proving Ground, a key center for Army testing and research, have left most of the city of Aberdeen's wells tainted by perchlorate. The chemical, which is used as a propellant, impairs thyroid function and is suspected of contributing to developmental problems in fetuses, infants and young children.
As it negotiates cleanup of Aberdeen's wells, Maryland is being drawn into a national dispute over perchlorate, a saltlike compound detected in ground water in 21 other states from Massachusetts to California.
The major question facing states is this: How much perchlorate can people safely ingest? The Environmental Protection Agency, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Defense Department have not reached a consensus on the standard to be allowed.
So, states are setting their own advisory levels - with Maryland and Massachusetts having the nation's lowest. The standard is critical in Aberdeen and across the nation, because the lower the level allowed, the higher the cleanup cost. It could push Defense Department spending into the billions of dollars instead of millions.
But without an EPA-determined national limit for perchlorate in drinking water, the military's response has been blunt: No standard, no cleanup.
"The battle line is really being drawn between EPA and DoD," said California lawyer Barry Groveman.
In Aberdeen, a community group that monitors cleanup at APG has written Maryland senators, Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, decrying the drawn-out discussions between state and federal officials as "sending the wrong message to the DoD."
The Defense Department argues that the message on perchlorate is simple: Research has not clearly defined a public health hazard.
"I don't think anyone is satisfied with the level of scientific information on perchlorate," said John Paul Woodley Jr., assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental matters.
He was surprised when asked how the military would respond to a cleanup order in Maryland of 1 part per billion, the state's current advisory level.
