A slew of impactful executive orders coming from the new presidential administration is sparking uncertainty amid efforts to clean up a toxic chemical spill at Brunswick’s airport.

Under the new administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, and with many federal funding programs facing uncertainty, local authorities are waiting for things to settle and, ultimately, to get a sense of what may come next. They face the expensive task of cleaning up PFAS-laden aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) at Brunswick Executive Airport a malfunctioning fire suppression system dumped tens of thousands of gallons into the nearby environment in August.

The cleanup costs and ongoing monitoring of private drinking wells near the airport, formerly Naval Air Station Brunswick, have amounted to over $781,000 as of the end of December.

The entity on the hook for the spill — Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority (MRRA), which is charged with redeveloping former Navy land — faces a mounting cost as its $21.9 million budget requests to the state and the Federal Aviation Administration are pending. An insurance payout has covered just $250,000.

MRRA’s interim Executive Director Steve Levesque said that the authority, like everyone else, is waiting to learn more. This sentiment echoed Brunswick Town Manager Julia Henze, who said that everyone is watching what’s happening in Washington D.C. and wondering what will happen next.

Though PFAS is at the forefront of the conversation surrounding the spill, the town does not have a vehicle to regulate the toxic chemical family, which is known to be harmful to human health. Henze said at the moment, the town is mostly trying to cultivate relationships with the people who can address PFAS, such as the EPA, Department of Environmental Protection, MRRA and the Navy.

“We’re mostly just trying to cultivate relationships locally and stay in touch and share information as we’re all waiting to see how things fly,” Henze said.

‘Seesaw period’ and working local

Dr. David Page, a chemist and the town’s representative to the Restoration Advisory Board, said that under Trump’s first term, the EPA often had the RAB’s hands tied, arguing that limitations affected the response to restoration, remediation and reuse of land at the former base. He added that when the pendulum swings back in the other direction, agencies can’t recover overnight.

“It’s kind of like waves of epidemics,” he said, noting that he expects this to happen with federal regulatory agencies. He referred to it as a “seesaw period.” In the case of Brunswick, he, like many others, are curious what will come out of the next four years — particularly with the Navy and how closely it will follow the Base Realignment and Closure Act that closed the air station. But he said that it can be hard for agencies to be “yanked in two directions.”

Despite this wavering period, local leaders are still striving to enact change at the state level. For instance, Brunswick State Rep. Dan Ankeles said that while he’s worried about how the new administration could impact regulations for PFAS, this doesn’t change some of the bills he submitted this year, such as the statewide AFFF inventory (LD400) or AFFF takeback (LD222) bills.

Both initiatives seek to ultimately get track and get rid of the toxic foam around the state, and Ankeles suspects they are particularly well-positioned to be “just fine regardless of what the federal government does in this case.” A more Brunswick specific bill such as LD407 which aims to prohibit AFFF at the former air station may be harder, however, as there may be fewer avenues to get federal financial help to do so, he said.

Still, he described the current situation as having a less cooperate federal partner, though he noted it was “generous” to call the previous administration’s federal partners cooperative. He said, at times, that the latter was meticulous to a point of in-effectiveness.

“There was no sort of nimble action,” he said. “And now it’s likely we’ll just be abandoned altogether. So I’m worried about that.”

Ultimately, Page said that it is important to help the town understand the risks and liabilities present at the former Navy base, including with AFFF in the hangars. One day, he said, MRRA will be gone and Brunswick will remain, though possibly with heavily contaminated sites. Understanding the risks and informing leaders can help pave a way forward. Paged referenced a quote often attributed to 1930s politician Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill Jr., “All politics is local.”

“One of the nice things about America is that most of the governing happens at the state and local level,” Page said. “So we try to affect those processes where efforts can bear the most fruit.”

The EPA and U.S. Navy did not respond to requests for comment for this story.