How Different Water Utilities Around the US are responding to PFAS contamination in Rivers

Introduction
Per-polyfluroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are man-made chemicals that can be found in numerous watersheds throughout the country. PFAS have earned the term forever chemicals because they do not naturally breakdown in the environment. PFAS are commonly used in many industrial processes to make up common everyday household items. Due to these industrial processes, many PFAS have ended up in watersheds and waterways that are the drinking water sources for many communities across the country. Rivers can become polluted through many different sources; this is especially true for PFAS pollution. One-way rivers become polluted is through a nonpoint source in which the pollutant can come from run off or seeps into the ground and eventually ends up in rivers nearby. Another example is through the application of biosolids that could contain PFAS. The EPA passed new PFAS MCLs on April 10, 2024, which would require the water utilities around the country to comply with these MCLs by 2029. Before the EPA set this standard, different communities were already testing for PFAS and making the treated water PFAS free. This was heavily incentivized due to the negative effects the communities were seeing among the residents that rely on and consume polluted water.

#PFAS Dataset
This study analyzed five different rivers across the United States; each of these rivers are a source of drinking water for the surrounding population and levels of PFAS have been detected in them. The rivers that will be talked about in this presentation are: the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, the Conasauga River in Georgia, the Mississippi River in Iowa, the Tennessee River in Alabama and the Ohio River which covers multiple different states. The data comes from the publicly available UCMR5 data, as well as the latest data from the water quality reports published by each of the different municipalities that are looked at.

#Timeline of Pollution
The history of these rivers is a long one, often times these became polluted due to different companies and industries discharging PFAS to surface water in the area. This can be from landfill leachate or from wastewater treatment plants that take industrial waste and then unknowingly discharge PFAS into rivers. Another common example of how rivers can get polluted is through different industries and facilities in the area that produce PFAS compounds as a product or by-product of their process and discharge that waste directly into rivers upstream of water treatment plants. Common examples of the different industries would be companies like 3M, DuPont or Chemours, which is an off shoot of DuPont, and other different companies as well.

#A historical review of each river was conducted to fully understand how the PFAS pollution came to be. Each river is different in its history as well as location, this could affect different parts of the river, different communities; this means that different communities will see different results when it comes to treatment and PFAS pollution removal.

#PFAS Removal Technologies
A review of each of the different treatment technologies was conducted. This summarizes the different solutions each different municipalities took for their respective water treatment plants. The technologies that were reviewed were Granular Activated Carbon (GAC), Reverse Osmosis (RO) and Membrane and Micro filtration. Although there are more technologies available for PFAS removal, the ones that are highlighted in this presentation will be covered in depth, regarding the cost associated with implementation at the respective treatment plants as well as the associated MGD and date the technology was put into operation. This is to better qualify the cost of treating for PFAS in drinking water to help outline the growth of costs over the years.

#Conclusion
PFAS pollution is a widespread issue that affects all corners of the country. PFAS pollution is primarily due to different industrial companies who discharges PFAS directly into our drinking water sources. These industries were able to discharge directly into rivers partially because there were no federal restrictions on how much PFAS could be discharged into the environment. For many it wasn't until recently that PFAS started to become a hot topic of discussion and testing, and lawsuits arose that brought the attention of the public to these companies and industries. Now that the new PFAS regulations are in place, these communities will need to provide PFAS treatment solutions to show that their levels can get below the EPA MCLs by the year 2029. Different technologies will work best for different municipalities, which is why comparing all the available technologies and data from other water drinking plants from the area is important when making decisions for each individual water source and water system. This presentation will help water utilities during the PFAS remediation plan implementation, by showing what is being done around the country.