This story begins with an incarcerated man named Mark Sinawski, who, for years, has raised concerns about water coming through the pipes at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility. He said prisoners are forced to use this water while the guards bring in filtered water for themselves.
The facility is on the grounds of Joint Base Cape Cod, which was named a Superfund site by the federal government in 1989. For decades prior, the military spilled fuel and firefighting foam made with “forever chemicals” directly into sandy, porous soil on the base, which contaminated a below-ground aquifer that provides 220,000 Cape Cod residents with their drinking water. A $1.5 billion cleanup is still ongoing.
Cape and Islands' Eve Zuckoff has received unprecedented approval from the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Department to interview Sinawski at the jail and collect water samples that can be analyzed for 18 PFAS compounds, along with radium, arsenic, lead, fluoride, nitrate, and trihalomethanes.
