AWWA presents PFAS testimony at two recent Congressional hearings

Tracy Mehan, AWWA’s executive director of government affairs, spoke on behalf of AWWA and its members before the House Subcommittee on the Environment and Climate Change on May 15 and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on May 22 (pictured at right with Committee Chair Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.)
 
“The EPA (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) released its PFAS Action Plan earlier this year,” said Mehan, a former state and federal regulator. “While we saw some positive steps promised in that plan, we believe authorities exist for federal entities to do even more.”

PFAS are resistant to water and heat, and are used in clothing, furniture, cookware and many other consumer products, as well as in firefighting foam and the manufacture of plastic and rubber. There are more than 3,000 known PFAS chemicals, and their detection in drinking water supplies and soil is raising widespread concern about potential health effects.

In his testimony, Mehan, who worked at the EPA from 2001 through 2003 as assistant administrator for water, emphasized the importance of using sound scientific process to evaluate PFAS regulation and urged Congress to fund additional research on health effects, analytical methods and treatment technologies.

“We are eager to follow the data on PFAS compounds wherever it may go in the investigative process so that we may know how to best protect public health,” he said.

He proposed that the EPA, through authority under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA), be provided adequate funding to gather data regarding the testing and restriction of these chemicals.

In addition to TSCA, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) protects public drinking water by empowering the EPA to manage naturally-occurring and man-made risks to drinking water. Mehan proposed the EPA should use these existing authorities to:

•    Provide a report in one year describing the U.S. locations of PFAS production, import, processing and use for individual PFAS compounds based on data collected through TSCA and update the report every two years.
•    Describe actions taken or planned under TSCA to restrict PFAS production, use and import, and communicate risks to the public.
•    Describe actions taken by other federal agencies regarding PFAS, specifically the departments of Defense and Health and Human Services.
•    Provide an annual report to congress about statutory and non-statutory barriers encountered through collecting and distributing PFAS information to inform risk management decisions by the EPA, states and local risk managers.

Regulation under the SDWA requires that the substance “is known to occur or there is a substantial likelihood that the contaminant will occur in public water systems with a frequency and at levels of public health concern; and in the sole judgment of the Administrator, regulation of such contaminants presents a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public water systems.”

Mehan discussed necessary research needed in these areas:
•    Health effects data on which PFAS compounds pose a human health risk
•    Analytical methods to quantify levels of PFAS compounds in environmental samples (natural waters, wastewaters, soil, finished water)
•    Technologies to cost-effectively remove, and/or destroy, problematic PFAS compounds from drinking water and wastewaters to levels that do not pose public health concerns

Due to the uncertainty in the timing of the EPA establishing national regulation on PFAS, nearly 12 states already have formal policy statements on PFAS management in drinking water and even more have policies aimed at controlling the release of PFAS from contaminated sites. AWWA’s government affairs department is tracking this information.

“Our members are concerned about states setting a range of maximum contaminant levels for PFAS compounds using a range of different analytical techniques, sometimes without adequate cost-benefit analysis,” Mehan said.