Dutch Hendricks is showing me the carburetor he's rebuilding when he mentions, almost offhandedly, that he stopped drinking his tap water three months ago. We're in his garage outside Colorado Springs. Meticulously organized space that smells like motor oil and old coffee. Military plaques line one wall. An American flag hangs above his workbench. The 1967 Mustang he's restoring sits on blocks, cherry red and half-assembled, like a patient mid-surgery.
Dutch retired from the Air Force six years ago after twenty-three years as an aircraft mechanic. He bought this property specifically because it's fifteen minutes from Peterson Space Force Base, where he worked his last posting. When he talks about the base, he still says "we" not "they."
The well testing results that changed everything are folded in his back pocket, next to his wallet. He keeps touching the pocket unconsciously, like he's checking for his keys.
The 2026 defense authorization bill includes provisions requiring the Department of Defense to provide clean drinking water to households with private wells contaminated by PFAS from military activities.1 For Dutch, this creates an immediate decision: accept the DOD's offer of bottled water delivery until they install a filtration system, or connect to city water at his own expense and potentially sue for damages.
Neither option feels right. Both require admitting something he's been avoiding for months.
This conversation is a composite drawn from interviews with multiple private well owners near military installations facing similar decisions. Dutch Hendricks is not a real person, though his dilemma reflects the reality of approximately 40 million Americans who depend on private wells2 and the specific subset discovering PFAS contamination linked to military firefighting foam. The details are real. The person is representative.
How did you find out about the contamination?
Dutch: Pure accident. I wasn't even looking for it. Last summer my neighbor, guy three properties over, mentions his well tested positive for these forever chemicals. PFAS. From the fire training area on base. And I'm thinking, okay, that's his problem, his well's closer to the runoff.
But then he says the contamination plume is bigger than anyone thought. Says I should test mine just to be safe.
So I do the test. Two hundred and forty parts per trillion. The EPA's new limit is four.1
Four.
I'm at two hundred and forty.
I called the number on the test results and this woman explains it very calmly, very professionally. She says PFAS are "persistent organic pollutants" that don't break down. They accumulate in your body. Potential links to cancer, thyroid disease, immune system problems. She's reading from a script, I can tell. She says the Air Force has been aware of contamination issues at multiple sites since the early 2000s.
I just kept thinking: I drank this water for six years. My grandkids drank this water when they visited. I made coffee with it this morning before I got the results.
What was your first instinct?
Dutch: Honestly? Denial. Like, this has to be a mistake. The Air Force wouldn't... they wouldn't do this. Not here. Not to us.
I spent twenty-three years trusting that institution with my life. You're in a C-17 at thirty thousand feet and you trust that every bolt, every hydraulic line, every system was maintained correctly because that's the culture. We took care of each other. We took care of our equipment. We took care of our community.
And now I'm supposed to believe they poisoned my well? That they knew about it and didn't tell anyone?
That's not the Air Force I know.
(pause)
Except it is, apparently. It is exactly what happened.
The new defense bill requires them to provide bottled water and eventually a filtration system. That sounds like they're acknowledging responsibility.
Dutch: Yeah. Yeah, they sent me a letter three weeks ago. Very official. Says they'll deliver bottled water for drinking and cooking until they can install a whole-house filtration system, which could take, and I love this phrase, "up to eighteen months depending on contractor availability and site assessment requirements."
Eighteen months of bottled water. Eighteen months of showering in contaminated water because the filtration system they're promising doesn't exist yet. Eighteen months of wondering if I'm washing dishes in poison, if I should be bathing my grandkids here when they visit, if the vegetables in my garden are safe because I've been watering them from this well for six years.
The letter says I can refuse the bottled water and pursue "alternative remediation options at my own expense." Which is code for: hook up to city water yourself and maybe we'll reimburse you, maybe we won't, good luck with that.
What would city water connection cost?
Dutch: Forty-three thousand dollars.
I got three quotes. The city line runs along the main road, about eight hundred feet from my property line. They have to trench across my front acre, install the meter, abandon the well properly. You can't just cap it and walk away, there's a whole decommissioning process. Then I'm on city water forever, which means a monthly bill instead of free well water.
But here's the thing that keeps me up at night: even if I connect to city water, what's my property worth now? I bought this place for two-eighty. Zillow says it's worth three-sixty now, but that's before anyone knows about the contamination. Once it's public record that there's a PFAS plume here, once every buyer's inspector finds that abandoned contaminated well in the disclosure...
I talked to a real estate attorney. She said properties with known PFAS contamination can lose thirty to fifty percent of their value.
Thirty to fifty percent.
That's my retirement. That's my equity. That's supposed to be what I leave my kids.
So accepting the DOD's bottled water means living with the contamination visible in your daily life.
Dutch: Every single day. Cases of bottled water stacked in my kitchen. Using it to make coffee, cook pasta, brush my teeth.
Like I'm camping in my own house.
And every time I do it, I'm admitting: yes, this is real. Yes, the institution I trusted contaminated my water. Yes, I'm dependent on their goodwill now.
My buddy from the base, he's still active duty, he came by last week and saw the water bottles and just... he didn't know what to say. We stood in my driveway for twenty minutes not talking about it. What's he supposed to say? "Sorry the Air Force poisoned your well"? He's still wearing the uniform. He still works there.
Have you considered suing?
Dutch: Every day. There's a class action forming. Lawyer called me twice. Says they're going after the DOD for property damage, health monitoring costs, diminished property values. Says it could take five to seven years and the settlement might not cover actual damages but it's something.
But if I sue, I'm suing the Air Force. I'm standing in court saying the institution I gave twenty-three years to damaged my health and destroyed my property value. I'm becoming one of those guys who turned on the military.
And I know that's not fair. I know they did this, not me. But that's how it feels.
My son says I'm being ridiculous. He says they poisoned your water, Dad, of course you should sue. But he never served. He doesn't get it.
What does your son not get?
(He turns back to the Mustang carburetor, starts cleaning a jet with a wire brush.)
Dutch: The thing about military community is... it's not just a job. When you retire, you retire near the base because that's your people. You go to the commissary, you go to the base gym, you know half the guys in the auto parts store because you served with them or their brothers or their dads. You're still part of something.
If I sue, I'm drawing a line. I'm saying: you're not my people anymore. You're the defendant.
And maybe that's the right thing to do. Probably it is. But it means I lose the last piece of that identity. I'm just a guy with a contaminated well instead of a retired Air Force mechanic.
My wife says I'm being loyal to an institution that isn't loyal back. She's probably right. She usually is. But knowing that doesn't make the decision easier.
What does she want you to do?
Dutch: Connect to city water. Take the forty-three thousand dollar hit. Document everything. Join the lawsuit but don't lead it, let someone else be the face. Try to get the DOD to reimburse the connection cost as part of the settlement. Move on.
She's practical. She's thinking about our health, our grandkids, getting this resolved. She's not wrong. But she also didn't spend twenty-three years trusting these people with her life. She can make the calculation cleanly.
And you can't.
Dutch: I can. I will. I just... I need to sit with it a little longer.
The bottled water buys me time to figure out what I actually want here. Is it the money back? Is it an apology? Is it someone getting fired? Is it just acknowledgment that this happened and it mattered?
The letter they sent is so carefully worded. "The Department of Defense is committed to addressing PFAS contamination at current and former military installations." Not "we're sorry." Not "we should have told you sooner." Just "committed to addressing." Like it's a process improvement initiative, not my drinking water.
You keep touching your back pocket where the test results are.
Dutch: Do I?
(He realizes he's doing it, stops.)
Yeah. I guess I do. I've been carrying them around for three months. I don't know why. It's not like I need to reference them. I know what they say. Two hundred and forty parts per trillion. Exceeds EPA guidelines by a factor of sixty.
Maybe I keep them there because if they're in my pocket, the problem is contained. It's just paper. But if I put them down, if I file them away or pin them to the fridge, then it's real. Then it's my life now.
(pause)
I should probably stop drinking the shower water too, right? The filtration system they're promising would handle that, but eighteen months is a long time. I've been telling myself skin exposure is different than ingestion, but I don't actually know if that's true. I just don't want to drive to the gym to shower every day like some kind of refugee in my own house.
What happens in eighteen months when they install the filtration system?
Dutch: If they install it. The letter says "up to eighteen months" which means it could be longer.
And even if they do, then what? I have a whole-house filtration system that proves my water is contaminated. That's not exactly a selling point. "Great property, amazing garage, comes with DOD-installed PFAS filtration system because we poisoned the aquifer."
And I still don't know what it's doing to my body. The letter mentioned "health monitoring" but didn't say who pays for it or what it involves. Do I get blood tests every year? For how long? Forever? Do I tell my doctor? Do I tell my life insurance company?
There's no playbook for this. There's no regulation that says "if you drank contaminated water for six years, here's what you do next." I'm just supposed to figure it out while the DOD takes eighteen months to maybe install a filter.
It sounds like you're angry.
Dutch: (quiet laugh)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm furious. But I'm also... I don't know. Sad? Betrayed?
I keep thinking about all the times I defended the military to people who criticized it. All the times I said "we take care of our own." And we did. We really did. But apparently that only extends so far.
The guys I served with didn't do this. The institution did. But how do you separate those things? How do you stay connected to the community while acknowledging the institution failed you?
I don't have an answer yet. I'm still working on it.
Kind of like this carburetor. (He gestures to the Mustang.) You take it apart, clean every piece, figure out what's broken, put it back together better than before.
Except with this, I don't know what "better than before" looks like. I just know it doesn't look like cases of bottled water in my kitchen and test results in my back pocket.
But I'll figure it out. That's what we do. We adapt. We solve problems.
Even when the problem is that the people you trusted most created the problem in the first place.