Getting started: What any municipality can do now about EPA’s PFAS ruling for water systems

There is help for municipalities and community water providers overwhelmed by the April 2024 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announcement of its requirement that water systems remove six “forever chemicals” present in drinking water supplies across the country. The U.S. Geological Survey indicates as much as 45 percent of current drinking water supplies are impacted by PFAS.

With three years to complete monitoring and, if there is an exceedance, another two years to install equipment designed to filter out PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl) substances, there is a challenge in just knowing where to begin. However, there are two initial steps municipalities of any size can take to start to get a handle on this environmental mandate.

The first step involves getting help to secure a portion of the multi-billion-dollar funding available to address PFAS and other emerging contaminants in drinking and wastewater. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which includes $10 billion in grants that primarily flow through states, is just one of the funding sources.

The second step acknowledges municipalities are passive recipients of materials carrying PFAS and are in the unwelcome position of having to invest significant money and manpower to monitor and treat contaminants produced by and received from other entities. As part of the process, a practical, data-driven approach to build lines of evidence as to whether municipally driven activities or those from other sources (industrial, etc.) may have contributed to PFAS found in a community’s drinking water could be considered. These two items are discussed further below.

A funding roadmap
While funding for water systems to better understand how to achieve compliance with recent EPA PFAS regulations is available, time is of the essence. These initial funding channels have a sunset, while the EPA ruling is forever.

Understandably, municipalities are hesitant. No one entity in the funding chain that moves PFAS-dedicated Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dollars to positive community impact has figured out how to streamline the process and water system operators, especially for smaller systems, say they don’t have the resources or expertise to go after funding.

Estimates for the cost of compliance—testing as well as the installation and maintenance of new treatment technologies—vary widely. Depending on what entity is sourced (such as the U.S. EPA, the American Water Works Association, the Environmental Business Journal), the estimates vary so widely as to be unhelpful. In any case, costs to most water and wastewater treatment facilities could be in the millions.

Help is at hand. There are several organizations with qualified PFAS experts who understand the complex funding process. They know that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s $10 billion is available through fiscal year 2026 and is administered via grants through each state’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and the Emerging Contaminants – Small Disadvantaged Communities Grants program.

These consultants can take on the writing of the differing program grant applications and typically do so at no cost to the municipality. If the grant is successful and recipient municipalities bid out aspects of the grant implementation, the consultants can participate in the competitive bid response.

The rationale for PFAS source differentiation
As to enforcement, EPA has indicated that significant contributors to PFAS release in the environment will be its focus. In its PFAS Enforcement Discretion and Settlement Policy under CERCLA memo, EPA stated: “EPA does not intend to pursue entities where equitable factors do not support seeking response actions or costs under CERCLA, including, but not limited to, community water systems and publicly owned treatment works, municipal separate storm sewer systems, publicly owned/operated municipal solid waste landfills, publicly owned airports and local fire departments…”

However, absent legislative protections, parties found responsible for PFAS contamination could move to include other parties—like local government water, wastewater and solid waste operations—into CERCLA’s “polluter pays” model.

Developing data that provides evidence of different sources of PFAS could help municipalities in this instance. Fortunately, there is a guide and screening tool to accomplish this. Developed for a wide spectrum of users, including lay people, the PFAS Source Differentiation Guide for Airports presents a lines-of-evidence approach to help differentiate between PFAS sources.

Federally funded research, led by contributors Janet Anderson, Dan Schneider, Mat Knutson and Zachary Puchacz, used machine learning to gather 800,000 publicly available data points in PFAS sampling results throughout the U.S., and consolidated the research. Recommended practices that use a data-driven lines of evidence approach were then identified based on the research.

Although the research focused on airports, municipalities impacted by PFAS contamination levels could follow a similar lines of evidence approach to collaboratively obtain relevant PFAS data, analyze potential contributing PFAS sources, and pursue more detailed site analysis or determination of treatment options and assignment of PFAS liability. Reader friendly, the guide presents a wealth of information from PFAS 101 to PFAS Sampling Protocols and Best Practices. The lines of evidence approach are summarized in three steps:

1. Desktop review

This is just what it sounds like—a search of news clippings, records and more that begins to tell the story of likely PFAS sources and geologic factors that suggest potential PFAS migration pathways. This work informs the next step.

2. Conventional sampling

The PFAS Source Differentiation Guide offers options on screening methods and data evaluation using standard PFAS analysis available in most commercial laboratories. Results from sampling further builds lines of evidence regarding PFAS sources.

3. Advanced analysis

Should it be necessary, advanced forensic methods to identify potential PFAS sources would involve additional laboratory methods and forensic analyses. These tend to be less standardized and widely accepted since they are more costly and take longer timeframes to complete than typical PFAS laboratory analyses.

Many local governments lack the resources in expertise, tools and personnel to comply with EPA’s 2024 PFAS drinking water standard. Knowing how to access funding to help fill these gaps and methods to generate evidence-based data, if needed, that informs on PFAS source differentiation, are two steps any municipality can begin implementing today.

Daniel F. Schneider, P.E., CHMM, is a senior principal and national director – site investigation and remediation at Terracon. He has more than 34 years of experience in environmental, geotechnical, and remedial construction management engineering and leads Terracon’s PFAS Professional Network.