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Military to check for water contamination at 664 sites
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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The military is checking whether chemicals from firefighting foam might have contaminated groundwater at hundreds of sites nationwide and potentially tainted drinking water, the Defense Department said.

The checks will be carried out at 664 sites where the military has conducted fire or crash training, the department told The Associated Press this week.

So far, 28 naval sites have been tested, with one site in Virginia and one in New Jersey showing chemicals in water at levels above the EPA's guidance, the Navy said. Tests at 26 other naval sites in mostly coastal areas have either come up under federally acceptable levels or are pending.

The Navy is giving bottled water to its personnel at a naval landing field in Virginia and is testing wells in a nearby rural area after the discovery of perfluorinated chemicals in drinking water, which the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry says may be associated with prostate, kidney and testicular cancer, along with other health issues.

The Navy found perfluorinated chemicals in the groundwater monitoring wells at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck, New Jersey, but not in the drinking water supply. Test results from off-base drinking water wells are expected this month.

And several congressmen are raising concerns about the safety of drinking water near two former Navy bases in suburban Philadelphia. The lawmakers say firefighting foams might be the source of chemicals found in nearly 100 public and private wells near the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove and the Naval Air Warfare Center in Warminster.

The Navy began sampling water at bases in December.

The foam is used at locations where potentially catastrophic fuel fires can occur, such as in a plane crash, because it can rapidly extinguish them. It contains perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOS and PFOA, both considered emerging contaminants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Defense Department said that until foam without perfluorinated chemicals can be certified for military use, it is removing stocks of it in some places and also trying to prevent any uncontrolled releases during training exercises.

The military is beginning to assess the risk to groundwater at the training sites not only to determine the extent of contamination, but also to identify any action the Defense Department needs to take, said Lt. Col. Eric D. Badger, a department spokesman.

California has the most, with 85, followed by Texas, with 57, Florida, with 38, and Alaska and South Carolina, each with 26, according to a list provided to the AP. Each state has at least one site.

The EPA in 2009 advised on the threshold of contamination by the chemicals at which action should be taken to reduce exposure. The advisory is considered a guideline, and not anything that can be legally enforced.

The EPA said then that it was assessing the potential risk from short-term exposure through drinking water. It later began studying the health effects from a lifetime of exposure. Those studies remain in progress.

The Navy started handing out bottled water in January to about 50 people who work at the Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Fentress in Chesapeake, Virginia, and it worked with the city to set up a water station for concerned property owners after it found perfluorinated chemicals in on-base drinking water wells above the concentrations in the EPA advisory.

The Navy is testing private wells of nearby property owners; those results are due next week.

Chris Evans, of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, credited the Navy with being proactive but said he's concerned anytime there's a potential threat to human health and the environment.

Some states have established their own drinking water and groundwater guidelines for the maximum allowable concentrations of the chemicals; Virginia uses the EPA's.

"We'll follow EPA's lead as this develops," said Evans, the director of the office of remediation programs.

There's a lot of evolving science around perfluorinated chemicals, said Lawrence Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

"The more that we hear, the more that we realize that this is a very important health concern," he said.

President Joe Biden drops out of the 2024 race after disastrous debate inflamed age concerns
Joe Biden
President Joe Biden

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday, ending his bid for reelection following a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about his fitness for office just four months before the election.


The decision comes after escalating pressure from Biden's Democratic allies to step aside following the June 27 debate, in which the 81-year-old president trailed off, often gave nonsensical answers and failed to call out the former president's many falsehoods.


Biden plans to serve out the remainder of his term in office, which ends at noon on Jan. 20, 2025.


"It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term," Biden wrote in a letter posted to his X account.


Biden, who remains at his Delaware beach house after being diagnosed with COVID-19 last week, said he would address the nation later this week to provide "detail" about his decision.


The White House confirmed the authenticity of the letter.


He did not immediately throw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, the party's instant favorite for the nomination at its August convention in Chicago.


The announcement is the latest jolt to a campaign for the White House that both political parties see as the most consequential election in generations, coming just days after the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.


A party's presumptive presidential nominee has never stepped out of the race so close to the election. The closest parallel would be President Lyndon Johnson who, besieged by the Vietnam War, announced in March 1968 that he would not seek another term.


Now, Democrats have to urgently try to bring coherence to the nominating process in a matter of weeks and persuade voters in a stunningly short amount of time that their nominee can handle the job and beat Trump. And for his part, Trump must shift his focus to a new opponent after years of training his attention on Biden.


The decision marks a swift and stunning end to Biden's 52 years in electoral politics, as donors, lawmakers and even aides expressed to him their doubts that he could convince voters that he could plausibly handle the job for another four years.


Biden won the vast majority of delegates and every nominating contest but one, which would have made his nomination a formality. Now that he has dropped out, those delegates will be free to support another candidate.


Harris, 59, appeared to be the natural successor, in large part because she is the only candidate who can directly tap into the Biden campaign's war chest, according to federal campaign finance rules.


Biden's decision to not explicitly endorse Harris appears to set the stage for the party's mess to continue up to the convention.


The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin.


The date for the roll call hasn't been set, and it's unlikely that will happen since the field is suddenly wide open. Harris would likely have competition from others looking to replace Biden. But that could create a scenario in which she and others end up lobbying individual state delegations at the convention for their support.


In 2020, Biden pitched himself as a transitional figure who wanted to be a bridge to a new generation of leaders. But once he secured the job he spent decades struggling to attain, he was reluctant to part with it.


Biden was once asked whether any other Democrats could beat Trump.


"Probably 50 of them," Biden replied. "No, I'm not the only one who can defeat him, but I will defeat him."


Biden is already the country's oldest president and had insisted repeatedly that he was up for the challenge of another campaign and another term, telling voters all they had to was "watch me."


And watch him they did. His poor debate performance prompted a cascade of anxiety from Democrats and donors who said publicly what some had said privately for months, that they did not think he was up to the job for four more years.


Concerns over Biden's age have dogged him since he announced he was running for reelection, though Trump is just three years younger at 78. Most Americans view the president as too old for a second term, according to an August 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. A majority also doubt his mental capability to be president, though that is also a weakness for Trump.


Biden often remarked that he was not as young as he used to be, doesn't walk as easily or speak as smoothly, but that he had wisdom and decades of experience, which were worth a whole lot.


"I give you my word as a Biden. I would not be running again if I didn't believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job," he told supporters at a rally in North Carolina a day after the debate. "Because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high."


But voters had other problems with him, too — he has been deeply unpopular as a leader even as his administration steered the nation through recovery from a global pandemic, presided over a booming economy and passed major pieces of bipartisan legislation that will impact the nation for years to come. A majority of Americans disapprove of the way he's handling his job, and he's faced persistently low approval ratings on key issues including the economy and immigration.


Biden's age surfaced as a major factor during an investigation of his handling of classified documents. Special counsel Robert Hur said in February that the president came across in interviews with investigators as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."


The president's allies seized on the statement as gratuitous and criticized Hur for including it in his report, and Biden himself angrily pushed back on descriptions of how he spoke about his late son.


Biden's motivation for running was deeply intertwined with Trump. He had retired from public service following eight years serving as vice president under Barack Obama and the death of his son Beau but decided to run after Trump's comments following a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when white supremacists descended on the city to protest the removal of its Confederate memorials.


Trump said: "You had some very bad people in the group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. On both sides."


That a sitting president didn't unequivocally condemn racism and white supremacy deeply offended Biden. Then, Biden won the 2020 election and Trump refused to concede and stood by for hours while his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, beating and bloodying law enforcement in a failed attempt to overturn the certification of Biden's win.


"If Trump wasn't running, I'm not sure I'd be running," Biden once said during at a campaign event.


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Follow the AP's coverage of the 2024 election at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.