‘Forever chemicals’ in water for millions
10% of water utilities may need to update treatment
After more than a year of collecting test results for toxic “forever chemicals,” the Environmental Protection Agency says almost 300 of America’s public drinking water systems – including some that serve hundreds of thousands of people – exceeded newly established annual limits.
That means these water utilities may need to start filtering their water or find new sources to comply with new rules limiting PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. PFAS are nearly indestructible chemicals that have been shown to build up in human bodies, increasing the risk for certain cancers and other serious health complications.
USA TODAY re-created the EPA’s analysis and found public systems in Fort Worth, Texas; Fresno, California; Pensacola, Florida; and Augusta, Georgia, were among the hundreds whose sample averages landed above the new annual limits.
That number is bound to grow over the next two years as more water utilities submit their test results. In April, the EPA estimated that 1 in 10 – or more than 6,000 – systems may eventually need to take some sort of corrective action to rid their water of PFAS.
47 million drink water with PFAS
Thousands of water systems have been testing for more than two dozen types of these compounds since January 2023 in the EPA’s broadest effort ever to track PFAS’ spread across the country.
Most public systems serving at least 3,300 customers must sample their drinking water either semiannually or quarterly and submit results to the EPA.
Almost 800 drinking water systems across the country have recently measured PFAS at or above the newly established limits at least once, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data the EPA released in midMay.
Water from these systems pours from the faucets of about 47 million people.
Altogether, the EPA data now includes PFAS test results from 4,750 water systems. Over 1,000 were included for the first time in the update, and they do show one bright spot: Many of the largest, newly added water systems haven’t detected any PFAS yet, including Los Angeles; Chicago; Tucson, Arizona; Boston; and Portland, Oregon.
These results represent point-in-time measurements, and the EPA wouldn’t require water systems to make changes unless a sample site’s running annual average surpasses the new limits. Plus, the agency is giving water systems five years to treat their water before it will enforce the new rule.
How systems are remediating
Fort Worth relies on water drawn from a nearby lake. Testing showed that yearly averages for three separate PFAS chemicals topped the new limits at two of the city’s water treatment plants, according to USA TODAY’s analysis.
Mary Gugliuzza, spokesperson for Fort Worth Water, said the utility took action last summer with a PFAS treatability study “as soon as we were seeing numbers above” the then-proposed limits. They plan to go before the City Council as soon as June for a contract to begin designing a granular activated carbon treatment process.
“We have been quite upfront that this is going to be expensive,” Gugliuzza said. “We’re going to seek any federal assistance that’s out there to try and reduce the burden on our ratepayers. But we also know that there’s not enough money for everybody out there, and a lot of people are going to be seeking this.”
Sample results from Emerald Coast Utilities Authority in Pensacola show the yearly average from a dozen wells topped the new limits – as much as six times over the limit in one well’s results for PFOS, one of the most studied and common PFAS chemicals.
The utility did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Recent budget documents show the water system plans to invest $2 million into a granular activated carbon treatment system at one of its wells.
Prior reporting from the Pensacola News Journal shows the utility previously sued manufacturers of firefighting foams, claiming that toxins from the foams seeped into groundwater around Pensacola’s airport and naval air station.
Even before the EPA finalized its new limits, the Water Authority of Western Nassau County on Long Island had been installing PFAS treatment for 11 contaminated wells to comply with New York state regulations that went into effect in 2020, according to superintendent Michael Tierney. Now, with the stricter federal standard, he said there are four additional wells where treatment will need to be installed.
“I’ve been doing this for 44 years,” Tierney said. “I’ve never seen a flurry of required regulatory demands such as this.”
The authority is pivoting its efforts to meet the more stringent federal standards by revisiting and retrofitting previous projects.
“I’m going to have to rip up what I just put in, in many regards,” Tierney said. “That really hurts. If we knew ahead of time and could have planned, it would have been much easier and much more cost-effective.”
Veolia Water, the largest private operator of water services in the U.S., has a few systems where yearly averages topped the new limits, according to USA TODAY’s analysis. EPA data show a water treatment plant at its Delaware location in Wilmington averaged nearly five times over the new limit for PFOA, another “forever chemical.”
The company has been proactive about addressing PFAS in several states for the past few years, and construction is underway on a new treatment facility in Delaware, said Michael Bard, manager of communications and community relations at Veolia North America. The facility’s 42 carbon filters will treat PFAS down to nondetectable levels.
The costs for the PFAS treatment project will likely be recovered by raising customer rates, Bard said.
“The cost of doing nothing is going to be far worse than the cost of doing something,” said Adam Lisberg, senior vice president of communications in Veolia’s municipal water division. “Nobody likes to pay more, but people want to know that they can have confidence in their water.”