Vermont environmental officials are pausing to reevaluate a stricter state standard for certain harmful forever chemicals after a change in stance by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this week.
Barely one year after the EPA passed historic rules to reduce the amounts of certain harmful forever chemicals in drinking water, the agency is now considering reversing some of those regulations and pushing back the timeline for drinking water systems to comply with others.
When the set of federal regulations passed under President Joe Biden, they set allowable levels of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, even lower than Vermont’s existing standards, which had been in place for five years. The stricter rules meant an additional 30 drinking water suppliers in the state needed to remove PFAS.
Now, the state’s progress on formalizing those rules is on something of a pause, as officials wait to hear more information about the federal decision.
“The amount of information we have as a state, is about the same as what the public has been receiving,” said Bryan Redmond, the director of the Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division in the state Department of Environmental Conservation. “We are waiting to schedule some time with the EPA to learn what the details of this mean.”
Wednesday’s announcement from the EPA keeps the Biden-area levels for two chemicals in the sprawling PFAS family. There can be only 4 parts per trillion or less of PFOA and PFOS chemicals detected in drinking water.
However, the agency has now added two more years on the deadline for meeting those levels — meaning municipalities now have to comply by 2031, instead of 2029. The agency is also announcing a federal exemption framework for some communities struggling to remove the harmful chemicals from drinking water.
The existing rules had also set a limit of 10 parts per trillion of four other types of PFAS chemicals. The EPA announced it now intends to rescind and reconsider the regulations for those other four regulated chemicals.
There are more than 12,000 chemicals in this class of compounds.
PFOA and PFOS are some of the most commonly occurring compounds in the PFAS family, and those are the two chemicals that typically drive the contamination issues in Vermont, according to Redmond.
The chemicals in high doses are linked to a litany of harmful health effects, largely because they are suspected of interrupting hormone chemical signaling in the body, and thus can lead to a range of maladies, from cancers and reproductive health problems to cardiovascular challenges and weakened immune systems.
Redmond said the next step for the state is to evaluate the EPA actions, taking thorough account of the science, the health impacts and technical details of PFAS removal.
“It’s possible to move forward with the existing standards,” he said. “It’s possible that we adopt the EPA standards, or it’s possible we do a hybrid.”
Regardless, the language in the draft state rule surrounding this will have to change since it references and rests on the EPA’s standards, he said. The state is “mid-stream” in that rulemaking process, but it’s been paused due to all the uncertainty from the federal agency.
This, at least, Redmond said, is a “push toward certainty,” so the state can figure out how it wants to act in response.
What the federal change does not influence is the state’s progress toward remediating existing drinking water systems known to be contaminated by PFAS.
“Regardless of regulation, we have been remediating down to the 4 (parts per trillion) level,” Redmond said
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Vermont was allocated five years of funding to carry out the remediation process for impacted systems. Money has been appropriated for the third year of work, Redmond said, and he expects the state will receive that soon.
Disclosure: Bryan Redmond is married to VTDigger CEO Sky Barsch.
