A cascade of procedural failures at a Prince George’s County military installation left state regulators blind while fuel poured into a Chesapeake Bay tributary. The system designed to catch it failed at every stage.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Sometime last December, a refueling system at Joint Base Andrews failed a pressure safety test. Under Maryland law — specifically the state oil permit the base operates under — that failure required immediate disclosure to the Maryland Department of the Environment.
No one made the call.
Over the next three months, the system continued losing fuel. By the time a base employee noticed a petroleum sheen on Piscataway Creek on March 23 and someone finally contacted state regulators, an estimated 32,000 gallons of jet fuel had leaked from the installation best known as the home of Air Force One. Of that total, only 10,000 gallons were ever contained. The remaining 22,000 gallons contaminated soil outside the base and reached a creek that flows into the Potomac River — a primary tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.
Maryland environmental officials weren’t told by a monitoring system, a compliance report, or a base commander. They were told because someone smelled it.
A Failure at Every Stage
What distinguishes this spill from ordinary infrastructure breakdowns is the number of independent safeguards that failed in sequence before anyone outside the base knew anything was wrong.
The first red flag came in December, when the base’s fuel system failed a leak safety test. According to reporting by NOTUS, which obtained 26 pages of Maryland inspection documents, the base did not disclose this failure to state regulators — a direct violation of its Maryland oil permit, which mandates immediate reporting. The Air Force has since confirmed it is investigating “actions surrounding the reported December 11 pressure test failure,” but has offered no timeline for completing that review.
The second layer of failure involved the leak detection system itself. According to the Maryland Department of the Environment, the base’s leak monitoring equipment failed multiple times between January and March, while fuel continued to escape. None of those failures generated a notification to state officials.
The third failure was in volume disclosure. Even after base personnel spotted the sheen on Piscataway Creek and contacted Maryland on March 23, the full accounting of the spill’s scope wasn’t provided to the state until April 8 — more than two weeks later. MDE’s inspection records, obtained by NOTUS, document the timeline directly. An April 15 report from Maryland inspectors stated that “efforts to properly control, contain, and clean up the release of fuel have been minimal and insufficient” and that cleanup deadlines were “now considered past due.”
The fourth failure came from the containment response itself. Berms installed March 24 and 25 proved inadequate when rain hit — contamination spread to Piscataway Creek during what lawmakers’ letters described as “moderate rainfall events.” A containment dam then collapsed twice in early April under heavier precipitation. Meaningful containment improvements didn’t arrive until mid-April, following direct site visits from state officials.
Taken together, the picture is not of a single equipment malfunction but of a reporting and accountability structure that broke down at the detection level, the disclosure level, the volume-reporting level, and the remediation level — four separate failure points over roughly five months.
The Legal Exposure
The non-reporting carries potential legal consequences that go beyond administrative penalties. Federal law — specifically the Clean Water Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) — requires responsible parties to immediately notify the National Response Center of any discharge that violates water quality standards or produces a visible sheen. Under CERCLA, intentionally failing to report such a discharge is a felony.
The Potomac Riverkeeper Network has called for a criminal investigation. “This needs to be a criminal investigation,” Potomac Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks told the Baltimore Sun. “They withheld information and they did not report the leaks when they were required to do so.”
The base disputes the characterization of deliberate concealment. It says it believed the January–February fuel loss was contained within the fueling system and therefore did not constitute an environmental discharge. That position will be tested by the Air Force’s own internal investigation into the December test failure — an investigation the base says is ongoing with no completion date specified.
What the base cannot dispute is the outcome: 22,000 gallons reached Maryland soil and water while regulators had no knowledge the problem existed.
A Watershed Already Under Strain
The environmental stakes are compounded by Piscataway Creek’s pre-existing condition. Since 2021, Maryland has advised against consuming certain fish from the creek after researchers detected unusually high concentrations of PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or “forever chemicals” — in multiple species. The Potomac Riverkeeper Network has stated that fish from Piscataway Creek carry the highest PFAS concentrations of anywhere in Southern Maryland, and has suggested that existing advisories may not go far enough in communicating the risk to the public.
The jet fuel spill is now layered onto that contaminated baseline. Lawmakers noted in their letter to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink that the creek’s legacy pollution “adds to existing environmental stressors affecting the watershed” and that the release “has the potential to cause further ecological harm to the Piscataway Creek, which flows into the Potomac River, a key Chesapeake Bay tributary.”
How much fuel reached the creek, how far it has traveled, and what the long-term ecological impact will be remain open questions. Maryland regulators have said they cannot yet determine those answers because the base’s contractors have not properly analyzed the affected water — meaning no reliable accounting of recovered oil exists.
No one has estimated cleanup costs.
The Accountability Gap
Maryland’s congressional delegation — every member except Rep. Andy Harris, the state’s lone Republican — sent a letter to Secretary Meink last week requesting a detailed timeline, contamination accounting, containment plans, and an explanation of the disclosure delay. Adam Ortiz, MDE’s deputy secretary, put the regulatory logic plainly: “There’s an equation with a lot of blank spaces that have to be filled in. That’s why the rules are what they are. People are supposed to report immediately.”
That framing matters, because the rules exist precisely for situations like this one. The notification requirement isn’t bureaucratic paperwork — it’s the mechanism that triggers MDE’s ability to act. Without it, state regulators have no legal authority to deploy resources, order containment, or protect the public. The weeks of delay between December and late March weren’t just a communications lapse. They were weeks during which environmental response was structurally impossible, because the people responsible for activating it were never told there was anything to respond to.
Governor Wes Moore, whose administration oversees MDE and who has made Chesapeake Bay restoration a stated environmental priority, has not issued a public statement on the spill. His Environment Secretary, Serena McIlwain, has been the loudest voice from Annapolis — calling the contamination “unacceptable” and stating that “the state and the local community deserve answers and a robust response.” Whether Moore chooses to weigh in on a federal-state environmental dispute with direct implications for Maryland’s most consequential waterway remains to be seen.
The deeper structural issue here is one that transcends any administration. Federal facilities like Joint Base Andrews operate under Maryland’s environmental permit system, but enforcement against a federal installation runs through federal channels. MDE can issue orders — and it has, requiring soil investigation, monitoring wells, and daily cleanup updates. But criminal referrals and legal accountability flow through the Department of Justice, which reports to the same executive branch that operates the base. The regulated party and the enforcer share a chain of command.
That’s not a Trump problem or a Moore problem. It’s a design problem — and the 22,000 gallons currently in Maryland’s soil are the result.
Sources: Maryland Department of the Environment press release, April 13, 2026; NOTUS inspection documents report, May 6, 2026; Maryland delegation letter to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, May 5, 2026; Stars and Stripes, May 6, 2026; Military Times, May 6, 2026; Baltimore Sun, April 13, 2026; Potomac Riverkeeper Network statement; Joint Base Andrews public statements, April 2026.
Keep MDBayNews Reporting Free
MDBayNews exists to help Marylanders understand decisions made by state and local leaders — especially when those decisions affect daily life, rights, and public services.
If this article helped clarify what’s happening or why it matters, reader support makes it possible to keep publishing clear, independent reporting like this.
Have a tip or documents to share?
We review submissions carefully and confidentially. Anonymous tips are welcome when appropriate.
Discover more from Maryland Bay News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.