At a glance, the photographs of the aftermath looked whimsical and innocent. The floating shapes were almost cloud-like, resembling something like an art installation against the green grass of late summer in Midcoast Maine.

Well, think again.

What we were looking at was evidence of the accidental discharge of more than 1,500 gallons of firefighting foam concentrate from Brunswick Executive Airport. The toxic foam – thick with PFAS, the forever chemicals that have already wrought so much loss and damage in our state – seeped out from where it was stored at more than 10,000 times the federal limit.

“The worst fears that we have had have happened,” Suzanne Johnson, an attorney who is co-chair of Brunswick’s Restoration Advisory Board, told this newspaper. “We were worried about a teacup full of (forever chemicals) being released; instead we have 1,800 gallons.”

Arguably as alarming as the incident itself – a public health nightmare that will have negative environmental ramifications for the local area for years to come – was the slipshod nature of the official response, and what that response reveals about insufficient oversight of storage of this type of foam concentrate, and harmful spills of it, across the state.

This spill should not have happened. What happened next also should not have happened.

From the outset last week, the information made available to the public was conflicting and confusing. The Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, the body created by the state to redevelop what is the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, said Monday that the cause of the spill remained under investigation. At the same time, state and town officials were reporting that the fire suppression system in the hangar in question had malfunctioned.

In a subsequent statement, the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority said it was committed to “addressing the cleanup with the utmost urgency and transparency.” It was heavily criticized for not adequately notifying local environmental organizations, businesses or the broader public. In the hours that followed came a would-be slap on the wrist: Brunswick Town Council passed an unpersuasive resolution calling on the body to improve communications and reporting. Per a Wednesday news story, “No specifics of how communications would improve were decided.”

Urgency and transparency, which we’re still waiting for, would have also been valuable in the years preceding the spill. Concerns about spills at the site had reportedly been raised multiple times. Indeed, other, smaller spills had taken place at the base.

The lack of transparency was flamboyant last week. How flamboyant? No adjective can do a better job of summarizing the damning state of affairs than the reporting itself. From the same news story, consider this litany of instances of reporters being nothing short of stonewalled:

“The Brunswick Fire Department wouldn’t answer news reporters’ questions. The city referred calls to the state. The Maine Emergency Management Agency wouldn’t release a 2019 inventory conducted by the Maine State Fire Marshal of firefighting foam stored at airports, fire stations and fuel depots across the state.

“State environmental officials did not answer questions about past foam discharges at the airport, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency referred questions back to the state, even though the property is a contaminated Superfund site that requires long-term EPA monitoring and remediation.”

The buck simply could not have been passed any further.

Best of luck with that, the official response seemed to say. Best of luck to our water supplies, ponds, brooks, rivers, beaches and coves, now tainted by these chemicals which we know all too well to have potentially disastrous effects on human and animal health – even in trace quantities.

Just how much of this substance is there in Maine? Who ensures that it is stored safely and securely? Who is liable for any escape of firefighting foam concentrate and PFAS-laden substances like it? What is the funding formula for the multimillion-dollar cleanup of incidents like this? What is the official protocol for testing exposed drinking water wells, relevant stormwater outfalls and more? Where else has this happened?

The questions go on and on – and we urgently need answers to all of them. That the process of securing these answers and establishing that accountability has required a spill of this magnitude, with square feet of noxious foam blowing in the air we breathe and slipping into the water we use, is galling.