The King Can Do No Wrong: PFAS, the Air Force, and the Collapse of Constitutional Governance
New Mexico claims the king can do wrong.
By Pat Elder
August 2, 2025
Top left - 10:15 am, April 21, 2022 - Hundreds of cows at the feed line
Top right – 10:45 am, April 21, 2022 - Hundreds of cows are euthanized at the feed line.
Bottom left – Cows are readied for burial.
Bottom right – A tractor spreads topsoil over the burial site.
From 2018 to 2022, Art Schaap’s Highland Dairy in Clovis, New Mexico euthanized its entire herd—approximately 3,665 dairy cows—because they were contaminated with high levels of PFAS from nearby Cannon Air Force Base. The euthanasia was carried out as humanely as possible.
Since 2018, the U.S. Air Force and the state of New Mexico have been locked in a legal battle over whether the state can compel the military to clean up widespread PFAS contamination stemming from firefighting foam and other sources at Cannon Air Force Base. The bravery and fortitude of the New Mexico government provides hope for those around the world who are suffering from this toxic PFAS contamination caused by the U.S. military.
So far, the Air Force has prevailed.
New Mexico argues it holds authority under its well-defined hazardous waste laws to monitor and regulate the Air Force’s careless release of these chemicals. The Air Force, by contrast, asserts sovereign immunity, an antiquated medieval concept that shields the government from being sued by asserting the divine right of kings.
From the Latin - Rex non potest peccare - The king can do no wrong.
The Air Force claims it is immune from state environmental regulations, agreeing only to minimal cleanup obligations.
Brave members of the New Mexico Legislature celebrate the passage of HB 140. Photo - New Mexico Legislature
From the New Mexico legislature, April 8, 2025: “Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed House Bill 140 that designates discarded firefighting foams containing PFAS chemicals as hazardous waste, enabling state-level regulation even when these substances aren’t federally listed. The legislation shifts cleanup costs from taxpayers to polluters, protects communities by preventing contamination of land and water, and establishes legal clarity for regulating these toxic substances. This designation will particularly protect our military communities, including those near Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis and Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo.”
Just two months later, on June 24, 2025, New Mexico filed a lawsuit in state court that demands the Air Force take immediate steps to contain and remediate the toxic groundwater plume—about four miles wide—that has contaminated private wells in Clovis, rendered at least one municipal well unusable, and forced the euthanization of thousands of dairy cows.
New Mexico claims the king can do wrong.
New Mexico is working to protect the health of its residents by seeking court orders that would require the installation of water treatment systems for contaminated households, connections to safe municipal water supplies, implementation of stormwater controls, and compensation for property damage caused by the toxic plume.
On July 15, 2025, during a scheduled hazardous waste inspection at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico inspectors attempted to collect PFAS samples. However, the U.S. Air Force refused to allow PFAS sampling, claiming it could not authorize such activity due to ongoing litigation over the state’s authority to regulate PFAS as hazardous waste.
New Mexico filed a motion for preliminary injunction, asking a court to compel PFAS sampling and permit compliance.
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“Denying access to state inspectors to sample for toxic PFAS contamination while claiming to value relationships and embrace transparency is downright insulting to New Mexicans…”
— James C. Kenney, Secretary, New Mexico Environment Department
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Art Schaap
In May 2025, the Air Force opened a new PFAS treatment system on the base. This facility pumps and treats roughly 600 gallons of contaminated water per minute, operating around the clock. The Air Force claims it filters out PFAS and reinjects clean water back underground. Although the Air Force won’t say, the toxic PFAS-saturated filters are likely shipped offsite to an authorized landfill where the carcinogens may migrate to groundwater and surface water.
Art Schaap from the Highland Dairy in Clovis, explained, “The DOD is trespassing on our water rights, pumping water from under us and disregarding state water rights rules. It’s only catching a small percentage of an aquifer that is miles wide. They’re using it as a success story. They have illegally drilled monitor wells on our property using the state transportation department as pawns to allow them to drill. They are running over property rights.”
“Not keeping Cannon accountable is a disservice to the residents and property owners in the area,” Schaap said.
Under the USDA’s Dairy Indemnity Payment Program (DIPP), the Schaaps received about $15 million in indemnity payments covering 65% of the value of the cows. Schaap says he has realized no income from the farm in seven years. The money was used in an attempt to rehabilitate the cows for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, a public health agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the end, the contaminated cows had to be euthanized. He explained, “We made the state test the milk. If we had ignored the water being contaminated, our milk supply would have continued. We stopped it and exposed the DOD.” At one point in 2018, Highland Dairy’s milk contained more than 5,000 parts per trillion of PFOS and PFOA.
The Schaaps are suing the federal government, saying the military was careless and failed to warn them about the dangers of the chemicals. This case is part of a larger group of lawsuits from people and communities across the country who were harmed by these chemicals. All of these lawsuits have been combined and are being handled in the United States District Court for the District South Carolina. Currently there are nearly 10,000 filings in the consolidated PFAS litigation involving firefighting foam, known as the Aqueous Film-Forming Foam Multi District Litigation.
The Schaaps also filed a lawsuit against the companies that made the firefighting foam and chemicals that caused the contamination. This case is also part of the South Carolina litigation.
The U.S. military dictates environmental policy, but few seem to notice. It dominates not only the skies but also the airwaves and public consciousness, in New Mexico and around the world. In Eastern New Mexico, the Clovis Committee of 50 and the Portales Military Affairs Committee serve as local amplifiers of that influence. These civic groups aggressively promote Cannon Air Force Base, focusing on securing funding and expanding its mission. They are central players in lobbying for military construction dollars and reinforcing the base’s long-term presence in the region.
They are part of a larger pattern President Eisenhower warned us about when he talked about the military industrial complex. Waging wars and preparing for them is very profitable. President Carter provided the bookend to Eisenhower’s comments during a Sunday school session at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, in April 2019.
Carter made remarks about how China had not gone to war since 1979 and contrasted that with U.S. military spending. He said that the U.S. had spent about $3 trillion on wars since normalizing relations with China in 1979. Carter argued that if those funds had been invested in domestic infrastructure—high-speed rail, roads, bridges, education—there would likely be over $2 trillion left over. He said, “China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. in almost every way.”
Air Force Propaganda
The Air Force, speaking through the Clovis Committee of 50 and the Portales Military Affairs Committee, uses familiar, worn talking points. “Cannon Air Force Base must be allowed and continue to uphold its significant mission and national security contributions while meeting environmental obligations to New Mexicans. Ongoing collaboration between the U.S. Air Force, Cannon Air Force Base, and the State of New Mexico is vital as Cannon continues PFAS remediation as transparently and expeditiously as possible.”
It comes across as good and noble, but it is a page out of the book of Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party. Only the most astute citizenry can see through the deathly deception.
How does the Air Force see New Mexico’s forthright demands?
“The Committee of 50 and the Portales Military Affairs Committee respectfully request that Cannon AFB be allowed to continue their due diligence to focus on remediation without the distraction of harassment and threats from other
governmental agencies.”
There is deep cultural respect—even reverence—for the U.S. military, particularly in conservative or military-dependent regions like Eastern New Mexico. In such places, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are held in the highest regard.
Thomas Jefferson
American constitutional government under siege
Thomas Jefferson believed that the federal government was a creation of the states and should remain strictly limited to the powers explicitly granted by the Constitution. He feared that a strong central authority would become as oppressive as the British monarchy. Jefferson warned against federal overreach, writing that “Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact... to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits.” To Jefferson, any concentration of power in the national government was a direct threat to liberty.
While the federalist system grants the national government authority over matters that require uniformity—such as managing interstate highways and printing currency, it must not be stretched to justify unrestricted federal power. The notion that the federal government could contaminate a state’s land and water without accountability falls entirely outside this framework!
Federal supremacy was intended to secure the general welfare and preserve order, not to sanction harm against the very states that constitute the union. Allowing such actions without consequence distort the principles of federalism into a shield for negligence and abuse, eroding both state sovereignty and public trust.
In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson articulated the idea that when a government engages in a "long train of abuses and usurpations," the people have the right and duty to alter or abolish it. That’s what we’re seeing today! This lethal and eternal contamination, along with numerous other “usurpations,” accelerates the inevitable collapse of orderly, constitutional governance. Hold your hats.
The EPA is part of the problem
Groundwater testing revealed extreme PFAS contamination at Highland Dairy—some samples as high as 37,733 parts per trillion of PFOS and PFOA, while the EPA is on the sidelines. The EPA has done a lousy job regulating these chemicals. In 2024, the EPA, to its credit, established an enforceable maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 4 parts per trillion for PFOS and PFOA. This standard is legally binding, but not legally enforceable until 2031, due to Trump Administration rollbacks. It covers two of the potentially dangerous 16,000 PFAS compounds known to exist. As it stands today, the EPA does not enforce binding limits on any PFAS in food or water, or any environmental media. The DOD and the EPA’s corporate benefactors call the shots.
Overseas
There is a widespread misconception around the world about the level of transparency practiced by the U.S. military—especially in regard to environmental issues. Many believe that American communities and state and local governments enjoy greater oversight and access to military installations than those in places like Japan, South Korea, or Germany. But in truth, the level of secrecy and lack of accountability is strikingly consistent across borders. Whether at home or abroad, the same opaque system operates—unaccountable, shielded from democratic oversight, and often beyond the reach of both constitutional and international law. Call it a cabal, a deep state, or simply the machinery of empire—it functions with impunity, indifferent to the rights of those living in its shadow.
Governments from Okinawa, Yokosuka, Yokota, and Atsugi in Japan have been frustrated in their attempts to gain access to US bases for PFAS testing. Access is restricted and only permitted under exceptional circumstances, such as after a known chemical spill or leak that is accompanied by press attention, and even then, it requires approval from the U.S. military under the terms of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).
In South Korea, routine access for PFAS testing remains virtually non-existent while groundwater in public wells near U.S. military bases in South Korea is heavily contaminated with PFAS and related chemicals at levels that could pose significant health risks, highlighting the urgent need for mitigation.
German officials have repeatedly voiced frustration and alarm over their inability to access U.S. military bases in Germany for independent PFAS testing, characterizing the situation as a lack of transparency and control in environmental matters.
Meanwhile, there is no record of UK officials attempting to gain access to US bases specifically to test for PFAS. It’s just not a big deal, although they’ll eventually come to understand the danger to public health. There is no documented evidence that Italian national, regional, or municipal government officials have formally requested access to U.S. military bases in Italy—such as Aviano, Ghedi, or Vicenza—for independent PFAS sampling or testing.
PFOS/PFOA levels in drinking water in buildings at Incirlik Airbase, Turkey, 2024.
https://www.incirlik.af.mil/Portals/4/PFAS%202024.pdf
There is no publicly available evidence indicating that the Turkish government has formally requested access to U.S. military bases in Turkey, such as Incirlik Air Base, for independent testing of PFAS. The numbers shown here from Incirlik present a danger to Turks and Americans on base. The frightening thing is that we are only seeing results for two PFAS compounds.
Also, there is no publicly available evidence indicating that the governments of Kuwait or Bahrain have formally requested access to U.S. military bases in their respective countries for independent testing of PFAS.
This isn’t a matter of local ignorance about the health risks of PFAS!
Around the world, fear and alarm are growing—while there is no recourse. The obstinance of the American military eliminates any real prospect for corrective action or for halting the continued use and release of these toxic chemicals. The military commands are beyond contempt, lacking the capacity for critical thinking and reform.
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A prescibed burn by the Army spreads toxic dust over suburban neighborhoods in Marina, California. https://bigsurkate.blog/2017/10/05/controlled-burn-on-ft-ord/
I’m working with a wonderful group of Fort Ord veterans and activists. We have raised $10,000 to purchase testing kits for use at the former Fort Ord in Seaside and Marina California, where the Army says vast areas of the deadly Superfund site are now suitable for development. See www.fortordcontamination.org
We hope to perform environmental testing sometime in September and we could do a much better job with a hell of a lot more money.
We will test for dioxin, TCE, PCE, CT, PFAS, Lead, U-238 Isotopes, Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl Benzene, and Xylene. Tests will examine soil, air, tap water, surface water, and human blood. National experts will direct our operation. We sorely need financial help. A single TCE test badge is only $45. Please support our work.