Jandakot residents forced to rely on trucked-in water due to severe PFAS groundwater contamination from local airport.

Overview of the Jandakot Airport PFAS Contamination

Groundwater contamination arising from legacy per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) represents one of the most persistent and complex challenges currently facing the Australian environmental sector. A prominent example of this challenge is unfolding in the semi-rural suburb adjacent to Jandakot Airport in Western Australia, where historical use of aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) has resulted in a widespread PFAS plume migrating off-site. The migration has severely impacted the local unconfined aquifer, forcing the airport operator to supply trucked-in drinking water to affected residents whose domestic bores are no longer safe for potable use. This dynamic is a stark reminder that legacy contaminants are not static historical issues but active, evolving liabilities with profound community impacts.

This situation highlights a fundamental shift in how off-site contamination liabilities must be managed by developers, legal advisers, and local councils. It demonstrates that when a plume migrates beyond site boundaries into areas reliant on groundwater, the problem ceases to be a purely technical hydrogeological challenge. Instead, it crosses into the realms of public health administration, community infrastructure delivery, and long-term socioeconomic negotiation. The intersection of environmental science with municipal planning is becoming the new frontier for contaminated land management across Australia.

For environmental professionals, the Jandakot case highlights the limitations of traditional, localised remediation strategies. When dealing with highly mobile and non-biodegradable synthetic chemicals like perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the cost of physical remediation often exceeds the commercial value of the affected land. Consequently, the focus must pivot from active soil and groundwater treatment to innovative exposure pathway disruption. In this case, the proposed intervention involves a highly unusual planning-led strategy: rezoning the land to fund municipal infrastructure and resolve the exposure pathway permanently.

Technical Elements of the Groundwater Plume

The technical reality of the Jandakot PFAS contamination centres on the migration of soluble fluorinated compounds through the highly permeable sandy soils of the Swan Coastal Plain. Historically, AFFF was utilised during firefighting training and emergency response exercises at the airport site. Over decades, these highly stable compounds leached through the unsaturated soil profile into the shallow, unconfined superficial aquifer. This aquifer is highly vulnerable to surface-derived contaminants due to its high transmissivity and shallow depth to water, which often sits just a few metres below the ground surface.

The current management strategy relies on the weekly delivery of trucked potable water to residents whose domestic bores have been compromised by the plume. This represents a direct, manual intervention to sever the ingestion exposure pathway. While effective as an emergency interim measure, trucking water is highly inefficient, subject to ongoing logistics risks, and fails to address the long-term depreciation of property values associated with contaminated bore water. The definitive engineering solution is to connect the affected properties to the metropolitan municipal scheme water network, which would permanently eliminate the exposure pathway for drinking and household use. However, implementing this solution has been prevented by several key commercial and technical hurdles:

• The low spatial density of existing dwellings across large-acreage semi-rural lots, which significantly increases the length of piping required per connection.
• The exceptionally high capital cost per connection for water main extensions, making the project economically unviable under standard utility framework models.
• The lack of immediate public funding mechanisms to cover infrastructure gaps for private landholders affected by historical off-site contamination.

To resolve this financial impasse, local government councillors are advocating for a planning-led solution that would involve rezoning the affected semi-rural land to a higher-density residential classification. Rezoning the land to allow for subdivision would significantly increase the density of the area. This planning intervention would reduce the per-lot infrastructure cost and generate developer contributions capable of funding the required water main extensions. This strategy illustrates how landuse planning can serve as an active mechanism for environmental risk mitigation, using zoning uplifts to finance the capital-intensive infrastructure required to manage off-site environmental liabilities.

PFAS Regulatory Framework in Australia

The regulatory landscape for PFAS in Australia has tightened significantly, guided by the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Framework for Responding to PFAS Contamination and the successive iterations of the PFAS National Environmental Management Plan (PFAS NEMP). The publication of PFAS NEMP 3.0 in March 2025 has further consolidated the conservative approach to managing these contaminants, setting stringent guideline values for soil, biota, and groundwater. Under the National Environment Protection (Assessment of Site Contamination) Measure 1999 (specifically the NEPM 2013 amendment), practitioners are required to rigorously evaluate human health and ecological risks based on complete exposure pathways.

In Western Australia, the Contaminated Sites Act 2003 and the Contaminated Sites Regulations 2006 establish a clear statutory framework for identifying, reporting, and classifying contaminated sites. Under these laws, the Western Australian Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) oversees the identification of affected areas and the registration of memorials on land titles. When off-site contamination is identified, DWER may classify the affected properties and issue regulatory notices to ensure appropriate management and community notification.

References and related sources

• Primary source: www.6pr.com.au
• PFAS National Environmental Management Plan (NEMP)

How iEnvi can help

iEnvi provides specialist consulting services relevant to this topic. Our team includes CEnvP Site Contamination Specialists with experience across contaminated land, groundwater, remediation, ecology, and regulatory compliance.

• iEnvi remediation services
• iEnvi groundwater services
• iEnvi expert services and independent review services

This is an iEnvi Machete news summary. Prepared by iEnvi to summarise the source article for contaminated land, groundwater, remediation, approvals and site risk professionals.

Published: 17 Jun 2026

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