Wastewater Plants Could Protect Against PFAS Pollution

Conor here: A common sense solution that the US is of course not only not pursuing, but moving further away from. And unfortunately this is another issue where RFK Jr. has been on the right track, but it seems the administration only values his worst ideas.

The following piece makes the argument that wastewater treatment plants have the authority to act but aren’t doing so. While the argument makes perfect sense from a public health viewpoint, there are of course economic roadblocks, such as the fear that requiring industrial customers to control PFAS pollution would cause them to move to a more “friendly” locale.

By Bonnie Angermeier, a senior legislative associate at the Southern Environmental Law Center specializing in federal PFAS, solar energy, and animal agriculture policy. Originally published at Undark. 

A class of humanmade compounds — known as PFAS, or forever chemicals — are insidious and harmful, and local U.S. wastewater utilities are likely giving them a free ride into drinking water and food. Nationwide — in states such as Maine, Michigan, and Texas — sewage sludge from wastewater plants that is contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances is being unwittingly spread onto farmland, where the chemicals can infiltrate our food and water and devastate the livelihoods of farmers.

In many cases, wastewater plants are making these contamination issues worse. While industries that manufacture and use PFAS should bear the primary responsibility for restricting the discharge of these toxic compounds into our environment, wastewater plants have a dual role to play in reducing exposure. Amidst a presidential administration that announced plans last week to roll back and delay drinking water protections for PFAS, making use of existing laws to control PFAS pollution is crucial. A Clean Water Act authority known as the National Pretreatment Program allows wastewater plants to curb the spread of these chemicals. They’re just not using it.

Currently, conventional wastewater treatment processes do not remove PFAS. Instead, PFAS discharged by industries to wastewater plants pass through the plants and into waterways and sewage sludge, also known as biosolids. Biosolids can then be sold and applied to land as fertilizer, allowing PFAS contamination to migrate into soil, crops, livestock, groundwater, and surface water. Applying PFAS-laden sludge to farmland seriously threatens our food chain, to say nothing of how this practice jeopardizes farmers’ livelihoods when they are unable to sell contaminated crops and livestock.

But wastewater plants have a major opportunity to control the influx and spread of PFAS chemicals. Pretreatment authority allows the plants to require local industrial customers to remove PFAS before they send wastewater to the plant for additional treatment. If used widely, this would keep high levels of industrial PFAS contamination out of wastewater plants and, in turn, out of biosolids and waterways.

Curtailing biosolids contamination would not only reduce PFAS presence on farmland and in our food chain, it would also alleviate the burden on drinking water utilities (which are separate from wastewater plants) striving to provide clean water to their communities. As it stands, many wastewater plants are irresponsibly discharging the PFAS they receive from their industrial customers back into our drinking water sources. Even worse, treatment interactions can create higher levels of PFAS. Since most drinking water utilities lack the treatment methods to remove PFAS, these chemicals flow through our taps and into our glasses.

Wastewater plants are paid on the front end to accept industrial wastewater and on the back end for selling sludge, with some multistate utilities bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Total U.S. wastewater treatment revenue amounted to $65.3 billion in 2019. The very least these public utilities can do is use their pretreatment authority to prevent PFAS pollution from reaching our drinking water and food.

Fortunately, this authority has already been proven. Wastewater plants have used the pretreatment program for decades to address toxic substances such as lead, mercury, pesticides, and dioxins at minimal cost. Indeed, approximately 1,600 wastewater plants are actively using pretreatment authority to set local limits that prevent industrial pollutants from passing through and interfering with their systems. This approach is equitable and cost-effective: It appropriately puts the burden of removing toxic chemicals on the industries that profit from their manufacture and use, rather than on drinking water utilities and communities. It should be no different for PFAS.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agrees. In December 2022, EPA issued guidance to states that affirmed the authority of wastewater plants to use the pretreatment program to address PFAS pollution, albeit in the absence of federal pretreatment standards. In practice, pretreatment authority can significantly reduce PFAS contamination. For example, PFAS levels entering the Haw River from Burlington, North Carolina’s wastewater plant went from a peak of over 33,000 parts per trillion down to below 600 parts per trillion after implementing pretreatment. (The Southern Environmental Law Center, where I work as a senior legislative associate, negotiated a settlement agreement between the city and concerned citizens, though I was not involved.) Some wastewater plants in Michigan are also effectively using pretreatment to curb PFAS pollution — achieving up to 99 percent PFAS reductions in biosolids.

If pretreatment authority was used broadly, communities nationwide would reap near-term benefits from reduced PFAS exposure. So what’s the hold up?

Although wastewater plants are required to evaluate and establish local limits for pollutants like PFAS, many are recklessly choosing not to do so. Instead, they knowingly pass industrial pollution on, leaving communities to bear the health and financial burdens.

Some wastewater plants claim they need federal standards to act, but the Clean Water Act affirms they can set local pollution limits in the absence of such standards. Other plants are concerned that if they ask their industrial customers to control PFAS pollution, industries will pick up and move to another town, where they can pollute as they please. This is why it’s so important that wastewater plants hold all industrial polluters to the same standards. If communities are to be equally protected from PFAS exposure, then wastewater plants must employ their pretreatment authority across the board.

While the previous administration made momentous strides by establishing drinking water standards for six PFAS and designating two PFAS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, it has taken decades to get to this point, and now these regulations are tied up in litigation. Codifying new federal policy and regulations is notoriously slow, and progress has been further delayed by the current administration’s decision to rescind drinking water protections. In the absence of adequate federal protections against PFAS exposure, pretreatment is key in keeping PFAS out of our drinking water and away from our farms and food.

As entities that pride themselves as public servants, wastewater plants have a responsibility to the communities they serve to reduce and control industrial PFAS contamination. The vast scope of PFAS contamination underscores the need to curb pollution wherever possible, prevent further spread, and reestablish responsibility for protecting public health. We cannot afford to wait for thousands of PFAS to be regulated individually, or to play whack-a-mole with each type of PFAS-polluting industry. The time is now to use pretreatment authority to hold polluters accountable.