The recent discovery of chemical contaminants in a few private wells near the airport might easily have become a public relations disaster for airport officials. Thanks to open, fact-based communications with neighbors, health and environment authorities and the media, however, it has instead become an opportunity for public education.

Who knew, for example, that the Federal Aviation Administration actually requires airports to test and use firefighting foam containing PFAS, highly fluorinated chemicals linked in some studies to liver, kidney and immune system problems and other negative health effects? In October, Congress passed legislation that directs the FAA to allow civilian airports to use non-PFAS foam — though it has three years to do so.

With increasing worries nationally about the hazards of PFAS, the Martha’s Vineyard Airport Commission and airport director Ann Richart took it upon themselves this year to hire Tetra Tech engineers to test the airport’s groundwater and also to use sealed containment tanks when conducting mandated annual testing of the foam instead of releasing it directly on the ground.

The federal government has yet to issue guidelines for safe limits of PFAS in drinking water, but the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection in June set guidelines at seventy parts per trillion. When monitoring wells at the airport showed PFAS contamination well in excess of that limit, the airport notified the DEP, began testing private wells downstream and sent notices to neighbors who might be affected.

To date, seven wells have been found to have levels of PFAS exceeding the state limit, and bottled drinking water has been supplied to those homeowners.

One of the crown jewels of the Island is its aquifer, an abundant store of fresh water that ranks among the highest quality water supplies in the state. An interconnected network of underground streams, it has been designated a single-source aquifer by the Environmental Protection Agency as the only readily available source of drinking water. Despite the term, contamination in one part of the water supply does not automatically affect the whole.

Recent events at the airport, however, are a reminder of the fragility of our freshwater supply and our dependence upon it. Thanks to airport and state environmental officials for taking the issue of chemical contaminants much more seriously than the federal government and for addressing understandable public concern with full information and transparency.