The Ventura County Department of Airports is eager to share with the community that the soil stockpiles currently stored on Oxnard Airport property will be removed from the property and taken to landfills for disposal. Environmental testing for the stockpiles, which focused specifically on PFAS contamination, have been completed and disposal of the stockpiles has been coordinated with the State of California Regional Water Quality Review Board. Non-PFAS impacted soil will be going to the Chiquita Canyon or Simi Valley landfills while soil found to be impacted by PFAS will be sent to the landfill in Buttonwillow (Kern County). Disposal is expected to begin as soon as December 11th and will be completed within 60 days.
We’d like to provide additional context and a history of this project. The information below was included in a community notice sent in June 2024.
As noted above, the soil piles are currently on Oxnard Airport property east of Ventura Road (see map image). These piles were associated with a previous airport construction project during which, in cooperation with the State of California Regional Water Quality Review Board, we agreed to temporarily store and test the material before disposal. The Department of Airports continues to work cooperatively with the State of California Regional Water Quality Review Board to delineate the presence of PFAS at the airport, which was recently determined by the federal government to be a chemical of concern and is a chemical found in FAA-mandated firefighting foam. For that reason, we set aside soil excavated from the prior project construction area to allow for testing before disposal.
PFAS chemicals have been used in the United States since the 1950s and are in products such as non-stick cooking pans, dental floss, food packaging, clothes, microwave popcorn bags, laundry soap, carpeting, etc. The article at the link below shares more information about PFAS in consumer products:
(https://time.com/6281242/pfas-forever-chemicals-home-beauty-body-products/).
These “forever” chemicals are also found in the aircraft firefighting foam mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which was used on two occasions and annually for required testing of fire trucks. It is important to note that no PFAS foam has been sprayed at Oxnard Airport since 2019. To meet federal requirements for equipment testing the Department of Airports acquired a specialized instrument to test the readiness of its trucks without needing to release any foam.