What they mean for us locals–and a little concerning how they came about
Last Wednesday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an agency of the federal government, issued stringent national regulations concerning PFAS in public water systems. The new regulations will have local as well as national impacts.
PFAS (Per-and polyFluoro Alkyl Substances) made local news starting in 2017. Several members of this chemical family, PFHxS, PFOS, and PFOA, turned up at very high levels in the municipal wells of the City of Airway Heights. One must assume that the citizens of Airway Heights had been drinking PFAS-laden water for years. It appears that most or all of this (and other) PFAS contamination of public and private wells on the West Plains came from PFAS leached into the ground water after decades of use of PFAS-containing AFFFs, aqueous fire-fighting foams, at Fairchild Air Force Base. Six years later, in 2023, it finally came to light that AFFFs were also used for decades at Spokane International Airport (SIA)—and that SIA officials knew back in 2017.
The new EPA regulations of PFAS didn’t just come out of the blue. Awareness of the many health effects of PFAS has grown over decades, starting with animal studies done decades ago by the chemical companies themselves, studies that only came to light thanks to litigation starting around 2000. (See the film Dark Waters on Netflix.) Many subsequent studies of humans exposed to these chemicals have shown links to kidney and testicular cancers, developmental issues, heart disease, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, immune disruption, low birth weight and other issues.
As evidence mounted, in 2016, prior to the Trump administration, the EPA “published a voluntary health advisory for PFOA and PFOS” which warned that “exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion, total, could be dangerous.” The new EPA rules limit PFOA and PFOS to 4 parts per trillion and PFHxS to 10 parts per trillion in public water systems. Why, you might ask, did it take seven years to go from an advisory to a rule, 70 ppt to 4-10 ppt? The details are complicated, but they go back to the role of Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA during the Trump administration:
Scott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House [under Trump] sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis [from PFAS], after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a “public relations nightmare,” newly disclosed emails reveal.
Details of the internal discussions emerged from EPA emails released to the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act.
The emails portray a “brazenly political” response to the contamination crisis, said Judith Enck, a former EPA official who dealt with the same pollutants during the Obama administration — saying it goes far beyond a normal debate among scientists.
Enck, the former EPA official, said she sees one troubling gap in the emails: They make “no mention of the people who are exposed to PFOA or PFOS, there’s no health concern expressed here.”
Back to the West Plains
Fortunately, a substantial portion of the population of the West Plains already was or soon would be connected to the much purer water of the extensive Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. The water would be transmitted via piping from the municipal wells of the City of Spokane. Airway Heights quickly switched to this source. In 2017 Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport were already connected to City of Spokane water.
However, thousands of people have been drinking water from private wells at their homes on the West Plains down-gradient from Fairchild and SIA for decades, wells many of which have levels of PFAS chemicals far exceeding the new regulations. And there is a glaring omission in the new regs: the new EPA rules requiring testing and water purification cover public Class A water systems—NOT private wells or even small (Class B) systems. That said, the new EPA rules will certainly serve as an example and a reference for those living down gradient.
To the Spokesman’s credit, Amanda Sullender’s front page article last Wednesday, “Public water systems across the country to test and remove PFAS under EPA regulations announced Wednesday” dealt with the issue pretty much head on. In contrast, the New York Times’ Lisa Friedman’s article, “E.P.A. Says ‘Forever Chemicals’ Must Be Removed From Tap Water,” exemplary excerpts from which are copied below, engages in both-siderism worthy of the Trump administration.
It is times like these that it strains credulity to remember that it was under a Republican president that the Environmental Protection Agency was established. Current-day Republican default commentary on any environmental regulation meant to safeguard human health is always some combination of “it will cost too much,” “the science isn’t settled,” or “it will hurt the poor.”
But Republicans and industry groups, along with many mayors and county executives, said the Biden administration had created an impossible standard that would cost municipal water agencies billions of dollars.
Several questioned E.P.A.’s accounting as well as the science used to develop the new standard.
The American Water Works Association, the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and other groups representing water utilities estimated that the cost of monitoring and remediation of PFAS could be as much as $3.2 billion annually. The figure is based on an analysis conducted for the American Water Works Association by Black & Veatch, a firm of consulting engineers.
Communities with limited resources will be hardest hit by the new rule, they said.
“When regulations are set near zero, that is not something manufacturers or water systems can economically achieve,” Brandon Farris, the vice president of energy policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote in a letter to the E.P.A. “Regulations that are not economically achievable will lead to critical substances being manufactured outside of the U.S. where environmental protections are often less stringent.”
We must recognize reactions like this and attempts by SIO CEO Larry Krauter and SIO Board member and Spokane County Commissioner Al French to delay acknowledging the Airport’s PFAS problem are typical examples of Republicans putting money and politics over people’s health.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry