seemed to languish intractably, PFAS
will remain a difficult issue for many
years, with new occurrences certain
to be detected in conjunction with
the Fifth Unregulated Contaminant
Monitoring Rule (UCMR5) scheduled for
programmatic implementation spanning
2023-2025, a continually proliferating
body of literature on health effects and an
array of PFAS regulations that will have
an indirect, albeit significant, impact on
the drinking water industry.
One such impact may manifest un-der
the Comprehensive Environmental
Response, Compensation and Liability
Act (CERCLA). In its recently published
document, PFAS Strategic Roadmap: EPA’s
Commitments to Action 2021-2024, the
United States Environmental Protection
Agency (USEPA) indicated an intent to
begin the rulemaking process for des-ignating
PFOA and PFOS as hazardous
substances under CERCLA, commonly
known as the Superfund law. This regu-latory
action could come into play for the
disposal of any treatment plant residuals
containing PFAS, including conventional
18 SOURCE winter 2022
settled and filtered solids, as well as spent
GAC, IX resin and other proprietary sor-bents.
In this case, USEPA and other
agencies of jurisdiction could seek cost
recovery for the remediation of sites con-taminated
via the management of these
residuals. While such a scenario could
subject water systems to potential litiga-tion,
it is not difficult to imagine a cate-gorical
liability exemption for these agen-cies,
given that utilities are not the source
of PFAS contamination. Nevertheless, to
ensure this exemption, it is important for
organizations across the water sector to
support statutory and legislative advoca-cy
efforts, including those by AWWA and
other professional organizations, as well
individual utilities with the resources to
engage directly.
A second, potentially more signif-icant
action would be listing PFAS —
either individually or as a class — as
hazardous waste under the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA),
which regulates solid waste. Unlike the
CERCLA case, there is no looming spec-ter
of risk or other financial penalties for
water utilities under RCRA; however,
the cost and logistical impact associated
with compliance in such a scenario could
be seismic. Notably, this step would af-fect
any utility that manages PFAS-lad-en
residuals, either directly or indirectly
via an independent contractor, with nu-merous
consequences. First, a hazardous
waste designation has the potential to
curtail land application of any residu-als
containing threshold levels of PFAS,
resulting in the elimination of an entire
option from the broad portfolio of resid-uals
management alternatives available
to affected treatment facilities. Second,
general/municipal landfills that are not
equipped and/or permitted to accom-modate
hazardous waste would no lon-ger
be able to accept PFAS-containing
residuals. The obvious alternatives —
hazardous waste landfills — have more
expensive tipping fees (and in some cas-es,
substantially so) and are also fewer
in number and typically located further
from water treatment facilities. Thus,
transportation costs will escalate as a
result of the increased expense of han-
PFAS CHALLENGES
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