Naval Air Station Pensacola

Base Background

Naval Air Station Pensacola sits on a 5,900-acre peninsula in Escambia County, Florida, where the Navy has operated a naval yard on Pensacola Bay since 1825. The installation became the Navy’s first permanent air station in 1914 and has trained naval aviators ever since. Today it remains an active Navy installation, home to the Naval Education and Training Command, the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute, Training Air Wing Six, and the Navy’s Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron.

Toxic Exposure at NAS Pensacola

Decades of aircraft maintenance, industrial operations, and waste disposal at NAS Pensacola generated waste oils and solvents, paints, electroplating wastes, radium-based instrument paint, and insecticides, contaminating soil, sediment, and groundwater across the installation. The EPA placed Naval Air Station Pensacola on the National Priorities List in 1989, and the Navy, EPA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection have been working to investigate and clean up more than a dozen distinct contaminated site areas.

PFAS Contamination

Multiple operable units across NAS Pensacola remain under investigation for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) linked to years of firefighting-foam use, including sites where earlier cleanup remedies were judged protective only in the short term because the full extent of PFAS contamination had not yet been assessed. The Department of Defense’s June 2026 status update lists the installation’s PFAS site inspection as complete and its remedial investigation as underway. Find out more about PFAS exposure and how to win benefits.

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

Trichloroethene (TCE), vinyl chloride, benzene, chlorobenzene, chloroform, and related chlorinated solvents have contaminated groundwater beneath several site areas, including the North Chevalier sites, the sanitary landfill, the base’s wastewater treatment plant, Building 71, and a former underground fuel storage tank at Site 44. The Navy signed cleanup plans for the sanitary landfill in 1998 and for the North Chevalier sites in 2008, with monitored natural attenuation and groundwater monitoring still underway at both.

Pesticides

DDT and its breakdown products DDE and DDD were found in sediment at the installation’s wetlands (Site 41) and in surface water near the wastewater treatment plant, and a separate Public Works Center site was used to mix DDT before its 2006 cleanup plan. The Navy’s 2000 cleanup plan for the installation’s pesticide-rinsate disposal area, where pesticide-application equipment was once rinsed, addressed chlordane and other pesticide residues left in soil and groundwater there, while the pesticide aldrin was separately found in groundwater at the North Chevalier sites.

Heavy Metals

Arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, beryllium, barium, and antimony have been documented in soil and groundwater at multiple site areas, including the sanitary landfill, the North Chevalier sites, the pesticide-rinsate disposal area, and Building 71.

Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)

PCB mixtures once used in electrical transformers and other equipment, identified in EPA’s records as Aroclor 1242, 1254, and 1260, contaminated soil at the North Chevalier sites and at Building 71.

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)

Benzo[a]pyrene and other polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) contaminated soil at several site areas, including the pesticide-rinsate disposal area and Building 71. In 2023, the Navy signed a cleanup plan specifically to address lead-contaminated PAHs in soil at the installation’s former munitions site, and that remedy is being implemented.

Anyone stationed at or working around NAS Pensacola while these chemicals were present in its soil, sediment, or groundwater could have been exposed without knowing it at the time, and a related diagnosis often isn’t made until well into a person’s civilian life. If you developed a medical condition related to toxic exposure at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Hill & Ponton’s VA disability lawyers may be able to help you obtain compensation. Get a free case evaluation to explore your options.