Officials say 51,450 gallons of firefighting foam containing high levels of potentially harmful chemicals was accidentally discharged at Brunswick Executive Airport last month. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

A fire suppression system at Brunswick Executive Airport was flagged as “deficient” 14 months before it malfunctioned and discharged more than 51,000 gallons of toxic chemical foam that state-funded clean-up crews have yet to fully contain.

The last test of the system intended to douse aviation fires revealed deficiencies in June 2023, but the airport owner, Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, couldn’t find a fire sprinkler company willing to fix them, Executive Director Kristine Logan said.

The company that conducted the inspection, Eastern Fire of Auburn, warned MRRA that the potential for an accidental foam discharge at Hangar 4 was “tremendous,” according to a June 2024 email to the airport facilities manager, Eric Perkins.

“In my discussions with upper management here, the only way that Eastern Fire would be interested in proceeding with testing would be if we had assurances that MRRA/Brunswick Landing is prepared to fund the substantial costs and liabilities,” wrote inspections manager Barry Prescott.

He warned the yearly cost of quarterly inspections would increase to $45,000, plus at least $60,000 to hire a specialist to collect and dispose of the highly toxic foam released during twice-a-year tests. In the past, MRRA has paid Eastern Fire $16,000 a year to test its foam suppression systems, Logan said.

Prescott did not quote a price to address the Hangar 4 deficiencies.

Logan couldn’t identify the exact deficiencies, saying she isn’t a “technical person.” She said she believed some of the system’s mechanical parts, including some in a control panel, had reached the end of their service life and needed to be replaced.

She said she did not know if the deficiencies were to blame for the Aug. 19 malfunction.

The airport has two other hangars that use the same systems and hazardous chemical mixtures to douse high-intensity aviation fires. Logan said she does not know the result of their last tests, or when they were conducted, but she noted that many of their parts are probably at the end of their service life, too.

Logan said Eastern Fire had rebuffed MRRA’s repeated requests to correct Hangar 4’s deficiencies.

“We went back and forth with them until September,” Logan said. “So then, when we couldn’t get them back in, we started calling around to other places to say ‘Hey, would you guys come out and do that?’ But nobody wants to do anything with PFAS anymore.”

Eastern Fire did not return a call Wednesday to discuss the Brunswick Executive Airport inspection or contract terms.

Kristine Logan, the executive director of Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, answers questions at a press conference outside of the Brunswick Executive Airport on August 21. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

The revelation about the deficient system comes three weeks after Logan discussed the Aug. 19 spill with reporters at a news conference outside her airport office. At that time, and during subsequent reports to the City Council, she said the Hangar 4 suppression system had passed its last inspection report.

Logan revealed the deficiencies only after the Portland Press Herald requested the inspection report. The paper first requested the report on Aug. 22, three days after the spill and a day after Logan told reporters that the malfunctioning system had passed its last inspection, or “come back clean.”

When asked to explain the discrepancy, Logan said Wednesday that she had relied on spur-of-the-moment information supplied by her staff to answer the Press Herald’s inspection history question during the Aug. 21 news conference. The conference is archived on the Brunswick town website.

Logan said “because we like to be open about everything” she was coming forward now to correct the mistake, which she only realized later after reading the inspection report herself. She only made the report available on Thursday morning, after an earlier version of the story appeared in print Thursday.

Logan could not explain how she could have repeatedly asked Eastern Fire to repair the deficiencies, tried to solicit other companies to correct them or begun working with lawyers to use Eastern Fire’s refusal to deflect potential legal liability if she had only just learned of the deficiencies.

MRRA is preparing for legal action because people always look for a scapegoat, Logan said.

“If somebody points to us, and says you’re liable, we are going to point, I hate to say it, but we’re going to point to Eastern Fire to say there’s some liability there because they’re the ones who are supposed to be maintaining the system,” Logan said Wednesday.

Fire suppression inspection… by Maine Trust For Local News

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Brunswick spill – 1,450 gallons of aqueous film-forming foam concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water – is the sixth-largest U.S. AFFF foam spill in 30 years, behind others in Florida, Alabama, Arizona (which had two larger spills) and Ohio.

According to the EPA data, which is based on information collected by the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center, 1,200 spills of firefighting foam containing toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or forever chemicals, have occurred across the country since 1990.

Even trace amounts of some PFAS are considered a public health risk, according to federal regulators. High exposure over a long time can cause cancer. Exposure to small amounts during critical life stages, such as in early childhood, can also cause life-changing harm.

The toxic foam is used by firefighters to fight high-intensity fuel fires at military bases, civilian airports, fuel terminals and industrial plants that use a lot of chemicals, such as paper mills. The foam forms a film or blanket over the fire, depriving it of the oxygen it needs to burn.

Firefighting foam is the most common source of forever chemical contamination in the U.S., according to the EPA, but PFAS has shown up in trace amounts almost everywhere, from Arctic polar bears to Maine dairy farmers.

But not all foam used in all airport fire suppression systems contains forever chemicals. Airports across the country are beginning to switch over to PFAS-free foams, but they are more expensive than AFFF in part because a lot more of the newly developed safe foam is needed to put out a fuel fire.