Mar. 15—A solution won’t be coming tomorrow for residents of La Cienega and La Cieneguilla worried about the safety of their drinking water — a point of frustration for some at a town hall Thursday evening.

“Back here, there are a lot of people saying, ‘When do we get free, clean water to use to drink and bathe in our homes?’ Because people need free, clean water now,” one man called out, to applause from the audience. “What’s being done about it now?”

About 200 people gathered at Santa Fe Community College and more joined online for a town hall Santa Fe County leaders organized to answer residents’ questions about PFAS contamination in the two communities south of Santa Fe. Before the forum, people submitted 100 questions to the panelists, who included representatives from the New Mexico Army National Guard, New Mexico Environment Department and the city and county of Santa Fe.

Water contamination from perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, has been an issue of intense concern since county testing, late last year, found unsafe levels of the toxic, man-made chemical compounds in three of six private wells tested in the area.

Exposure to the “forever chemicals,” which accumulate in the body, is associated with various health risks, county-contracted public health consultant Shelly Moeller outlined in a presentation Thursday.

The contamination likely originated from use of firefighting foam on a New Mexico National Guard site at the Santa Fe Regional Airport, where the National Guard reported finding PFAS in the groundwater in early 2023. The city’s wastewater treatment plant could be another source of contamination.

Residents pestered both entities with questions about accountability for cleanup through a moderator Thursday.

“The answer to a lot of the questions is, ‘We don’t know because we need further testing,'” New Mexico National Guard public affairs director Hank Minitrez said, echoing other panelists.

“The problem is, there’s more questions than answers right now,” resident José Varela López summarized.

This is a developing story and will be updated.