ANNAPOLIS, Md. – The Chesapeake Bay watershed’s checkerboard approach to “forever chemicals” is finally beginning to end. The cost to water utility customers — and the timeline for real action — remains to be seen.
After a long delay, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized enforceable nationwide limits in drinking water for six per– and polyfluoroalkyl substances, highly persistent toxic chemicals known by the shorthand term PFAS.
“Drinking water contaminated with PFAS has plagued communities across this country for too long,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in announcing the action on April 10.
The EPA’s decision ends more than 15 years of studies, health advisories and deliberation by federal regulators amid growing evidence of harm and calls for action. In the absence of any movement until midway through the Biden administration, 11 states — including New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware in the Chesapeake region — acted to set their own limits on at least some PFAS, while other states waited for the EPA to tell them what they should do.
A family of thousands of synthetic chemicals, PFAS have been widely used since the 1940s in a variety of industrial and consumer products, including firefighting foam, nonstick cookware, water– and stain-repellant fabrics and some food packaging.
PFAS have been found in the drinking water or groundwater of nearly 2,800 communities nationwide, including dozens in the six-state Bay watershed. Much of the contamination has been found near military facilities or airports where firefighting foam laden with PFAS was deployed or stored.
Studies have linked long-term exposure to even low levels of some of the chemicals with serious health problems, including cancer and reproductive and immune system damage.
The EPA set maximum contaminant levels for two of the most studied compounds — perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) — at barely detectable concentrations of 4 parts per trillion each. The rule sets a similarly low limit on mixtures of four other compounds: PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS, and GenX.
According to the EPA, the new limits should reduce PFAS exposure for about 100 million people nationwide who rely on public drinking water systems, preventing thousands of deaths and reducing tens of thousands of serious illnesses.
Environmentalists and public health experts hailed the EPA’s action as historic if overdue. Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, called the agency’s action the most consequential decision to regulate drinking water in 30 years.
The American Water Works Association, which represents many utilities, contended that the costs of complying with the new limits could be three times higher than what the EPA estimates. It warned that many communities may not be able to afford that.
The EPA estimates that 6–10% of all public drinking water systems subject to this rule might have to take action. All public water systems have until 2027 to monitor for these chemicals, and they must inform their customers of their findings. Where PFAS is detected above the limits, they have until 2029 to reduce the levels.
New York and Pennsylvania previously set their own limits on PFAS in drinking water, but at levels higher than now required by the EPA. Delaware was in the process of setting limits but held off after the EPA announced its proposed limits in 2023.
In Pennsylvania, where the nationwide PFAS scare surfaced a decade ago in drinking water wells surrounding two former military bases, state Sen. Carolyn Comitta, a Democrat, called the announcement “a great day for clean water and the people of Pennsylvania.”
The state Department of Environmental Protection estimates that one-third of Pennsylvania’s 3,117 public water systems contains one or more of the contaminants.
In 2023, when the EPA unveiled its proposed limits, DEP said that 93 water systems had PFOA and PFOS levels above them.
The EPA is providing $1 billion from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help utilities nationwide test for and clean up any contaminants, as well as to provide for testing and treatment of private wells. About 3.5 million Pennsylvanians use such wells as drinking sources.
In Maryland, 64 community water systems already have been tested and found to contain PFAS levels above the EPA limits, according to Jay Apperson, spokesman for the state Department of the Environment. MDE has detected one or more PFAS in about one-fourth of more than 450 community water systems tested to date. The state has begun testing the rest of about 1,000 systems statewide affected by the rule.
MDE has worked with water systems showing elevated PFAS levels to find alternate water sources where available, Apperson said, and has provided a total of $46 million to 13 community water systems to address contamination.
In West Virginia, which has dealt with PFAS contamination in the Ohio and Potomac river watersheds, the state commissioned the U.S. Geological Survey to sample the finished drinking water of 37 public water systems previously identified as having certain PFAS compounds in their raw-water source. Twenty-seven public water systems were found to have detectable levels in their finished drinking water, and 19 had levels above at least one of the EPA’s proposed regulatory standards.
In Virginia, the state Department of Health has been conducting PFAS sampling at selected public drinking water systems since 2021. As of December 2023, the effort had found concentration levels of concern at 18 systems — mostly in Northern Virginia and the Newport News and Roanoke areas. Those systems serve about 2.5 million people, or nearly one-third of the state’s population.
David Sligh, conservation director of Wild Virginia, called on state regulators to follow up on the EPA’s rulemaking by taking action to prevent PFAS releases to the environment through wastewater discharges and sewage sludge applied to farmland.
A bill passed by the legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin this spring requires the Department of Environ-mental Quality to investigate potential sources of PFAS whenever a water system reports levels above the federal limit. Any manufacturing plant suspected of being the source must self-report the types of PFAS compounds it uses.
In Delaware, the U.S. Geological Survey detected PFAS in more than half of the 30 wells it sampled, with two above EPA’s maximum contaminant level.
And in New York, the state has provided $2.5 billion for upgrading water infrastructure. Hundreds of systems have detected unsafe PFAS levels.