The people of Rockland County, located in the Hudson River Valley of New York, has been engaged in a battle with its largest water distributor, Veolia Water NY, to combat persistent levels of harmful so-called, “forever chemicals” in its water sources. These chemicals, polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are linked to adverse health effects such as kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid diseases, decreased fertility, decreased immune response, decreased birth weight, and skeletal birth defects. Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) statement that there are no safe levels of PFAS contamination, New York State allows a maximum of 10 parts per trillion for two PFAS compounds, perfluorooctane sulfonic acid and perfluorooctanoic acid, from 2020. Due to concerns about the consequences of unfettered contamination and negligence on the part of community-serving, private water utilities to transparently communicate a coherent treatment action plan, an open letter was sent to then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, spearheaded by advocacy group Rockland Water Coalition and co-signed by over 80 county organizations. The 2020 letter laid out a clear call to action of 7 central demands. In retrospect, this community action is what informs the progress seen today; the paramount catalyst, demanding swift and complete removal of PFAS chemicals from water, transparent communication about contamination and clean-up efforts, thorough testing and publication of results, emphasizing that polluters must be held responsible, that health-care providers must be provided with up-to-date information along with free blood testing to vulnerable populations such as pregnant women. It also suggests class regulation of all PFAS at the state level and vehemently requests legislative support to ban the production of PFAS in non-essential uses.
However, even for a Fortune Global 500 company like Veolia, the apparent scale of PFAS (a family of more than 4,700 human-made chemicals) amounts to a daunting task; its rampant state is a factor of the observed strength of carbon fluorine bonds and the chemical’s functional value to dozens of industries since its inception in the 1930s.
The aforementioned chemical qualities have allowed PFAS to assume an environmentally pervasive position. They enter the environment through the many entities that use or produce PFAS by way of industrial discharge. PFAS also leaks as customers use the final products of these industries (including but not limited to textiles, non-stick cookware, personal care products). Finally, as the PFAS-containing products enter landfills, their toxicity can leach into the immediate environment and contaminate water sources. Current scientific understanding also warns that due to its chemical resilience, PFAS has the ability to travel long distances, not explicitly limited to water but also traveling airborne, thus having potential to accumulate in the food chain.
The most recent update from Dan Shapley, Co-Director of Science-Patrol Program, Hudson Riverkeeper tells us, “about one quarter of the water sources in Rockland County that have been tested exceeds New York States standards in at least one of the tests taken.”
The impediment to substantial treatment progress is due to the fact that contamination sources are not obvious and identification requires rigorous, time-consuming testing especially in Rockland where the water system isn’t centralized. “There is a very distributed network of wells spread throughout the county that service and provide drinking water to the 300,000 plus folks,” said Sean Mahar, Executive Deputy Commissioner at New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
The search began with the likes of superfund sites, brownfields, inactive landfills, etc. There was a particular focus on areas of increased firefighter foam usage, which is a significant PFOS contributor therefore all too convenient of a contamination medium. The data collected likely informed a lawsuit against manufacturers of certain firefighting foams, as a first attempt at fulfilling the Coalition’s demand number 4, “Hold polluters accountable” and, as Dan Shapley said, “attempt at trying to get more compensation back to the state for what we’ve had to spend to protect New Yorkers and our legal strategy is very much continuing in that regard as we find more of these instances where we have MCL exceedances or detections of these compounds in the environment.”
Currently, Veolia sells carbon filters on their website but according to Peter Grevatt, CEO of The Water Research Foundation they are not a complete solution. “There are a number of treatment options that concentrate PFAS you’ll hear about granular activated carbon, you might hear about ion exchange resins, they’re very effective at binding PFAS, they don’t destroy PFAS and so the PFAS then still have to be disposed of in some safe manner.” Carol Walczyk, Vice President of Water Quality and Compliance, Veolia acknowledges this pitfall. “Destruction technologies is what everybody really wants but those are still in the lab research stage,” she said, “We would have to do an extended pilot study to prove that it would work.”
Based on the scale and technical complexity of addressing PFAS, a foreseeable, complete contamination resolution is unlikely. However, Americans are becoming increasingly cognizant of the nature of combatting PFAS. Incremental progress, historically testing and treating on a source-to-source basis, is expected. As EPA advisement and subsequent enforceable federal/state standards change, Americans are expected to rely on providers like Veolia to wield emerging and successful technologies to ensure safe drinking water swiftly. This article however prioritizes an effort that moves beyond blind reliance. The significant spark in pioneering water standards, a community action consisting of schools, civic, faith, racial justice groups, etc that brought accountability and demanded transparency from the government and provider Veolia alike. From this precedent, Rockland County has built a foundation of intentioned progress, hopefully a trajectory that can be formulaic for the dozens of communities throughout America facing a similar contamination crisis.