Sweetwater Authority, which supplies drinking water to roughly 200,000 customers in Chula Vista and surrounding communities, learned last month that its main reservoir contains levels of a toxic industrial chemical that could require expensive treatment or necessitate decommissioning the reservoir entirely.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed the first federal limits on harmful “forever chemicals” in drinking water, a long-awaited protection the agency said will save thousands of lives and prevent serious illnesses, including cancer.
The plan would limit toxic PFAS chemicals to the lowest level that tests can detect. PFAS, or per- and polyfluorinated substances, are a group of compounds that are widespread, dangerous and expensive to remove from water. They don’t degrade in the environment and are linked to a broad range of health issues, including low birthweight and kidney cancer.
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing three actions to protect communities and the environment from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in our nation’s waters. The actions announced today advance progress under the Biden-Harris Administration’s Plan to Combat PFAS Pollution by improving methods to detect PFAS in water, reducing PFAS discharges into our nation’s waters, and protecting fish and aquatic ecosystems from PFAS. These efforts complement the historic investment of $10 billion to address PFAS and emerging contaminants secured under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The Atascadero Mutual Water Company is suing three prominent companies after chemicals linked to cancer and other health conditions were found in wells that supply drinking water to the city. The water utility’s product liability lawsuit, filed Oct. 15 in San Luis Obispo Superior Court, aims to recover damages from 3M Co., DuPont and Chemours Co., which use the chemicals.
Trump-era EPA appointees engaged in “considerable political level interference” on an assessment for a controversial “forever chemical,” documents obtained by E&E News indicate.
But the Biden administration wasted no time in yanking that document, moving to scrub the assessment of alterations made by political appointees and restore language advocated by EPA career scientists shortly after the president’s inauguration.
3M Co. and E.I. DuPont de Nemours Inc. shook off a California water utility’s claims that they contaminated the state water supply with PFAS after the Central District of California found the utility failed to establish jurisdiction.
Golden State Water Co. alleges that the companies “directed and instructed” intermediaries and end users of their products to dispose of them in a way they should have known may cause contamination.
The Fallbrook Public Utility District will be repeating the bid process for granular activated carbon treatment system equipment. A 5-0 FPUD board vote Oct. 27 rejected both bids submitted earlier in the month and directed district staff to readvertise the procurement of the treatment equipment for bid.
3M Co., E.I. DuPont de Nemours Inc., Chemours Co., and Corteva Inc. are facing a suit by Golden State Water Co. over PFAS contamination of the state water supply. The water supplier seeks to recover from 3M as the only manufacturer of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid in the U.S. PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid are both in a family of chemical compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
House lawmakers pressed top defense officials yesterday for more information on research and cleanup of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. “I represent a community that has a number of PFAS contamination sites,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said during a hearing of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.
n article in the local newspaper caught Andrea Amico’s eye in May 2014. It reported that one of the three drinking-water wells at a sprawling business and industrial park nearby was shut down because of high levels of chemical contamination.
“Instantly, my heart sank,” says the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, woman. Amico recalls her reaction to the news: “My husband works there and he drinks water all day, and my two kids go to daycare there and they drink water all day.”
She’d never heard of the substances tainting the tap water—Portsmouth was one of the first communities in the US to discover these chemicals in public drinking water. Amico, who holds a master’s degree in occupational therapy and works in health care, started researching health effects from these contaminants and at first found little information.
Today, the situation has changed.
