With nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil under lock and key thanks to Donald Trump’s ill-fated war on Iran, oil derivatives like jet fuel are at a premium. That makes it all the more devastating that the US Air Force leaked some 32,000 gallons of the stuff into the Potomac river over the course of just four months.
According to bombshell reporting by NOTUS, Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews, the facility that stores and maintains Air Force One, has lost tens of thousands of gallons of valuable jet fuel over two separate leaks. That would be bad enough on its own, but Joint Base Andrews is situated directly on Piscataway Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River.
The timeline established by NOTUS is a little convoluted, but basically this could’ve all been prevented as early as December, when the base’s fuel system failed a critical leak safety test. Across the first two months of the year, base personnel noted the loss of roughly 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, though they believed at the time that the leak was contained to the base itself, and had not impacted the surrounding environment.
On March 23, however, an observer reported what appeared to be oil floating in the Piscataway, forcing the Department of Defense to make an incredibly embarrassing call to the state of Maryland.
Yet according to NOTUS, military officials failed to disclose how much fuel had actually spilled into the state’s waterways during that initial call. It took a further two weeks for the DoD to bring state officials up to speed on the full impact of the leak, prompting outrage from environmental regulators.
“There’s an equation with a lot of blank spaces that have to be filled in,” deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment Adam Ortiz told NOTUS. “That’s why the rules are what they are. People are supposed to report immediately.”
While it remains to be seen how much of that fuel ended up in the Potomac, the environmental consequences are surely catastrophic. For Maryland officials, the extent of the coverup so far makes it all the more urgent to get to the bottom of things. If the DoD can lie about two separate fuel spills for months, there’s no telling what else has yet to come to light.
“Efforts to properly control, contain, and clean up the release of fuel have been minimal and insufficient,” Maryland’s inspectors wrote in an April 15 report, viewed by NOTUS. “Deadlines are now considered past due.”
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