We Know What's in the Water. Now We Need the Will to Fixt It.

Sally Gutierrez is a retired Senior Executive, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Former Acting Director, Water Permits Division, Washington, DC, and former Director, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Cincinnati, Ohio.

(Disclaimer:  This article is written to express my own opinions after an extensive career in the water sector.  It does not reflect U.S. EPA policy or regulation and I do not speak for the Agency.)    

Water is at the center of our human existence globally. The challenges are becoming more urgent as we face decreases in the availability of water (both surface and groundwater), the decline in the quality of the water, and the increasing cost to deliver water to consumers and industries at affordable rates.  Many times, drinking water safety, water quality in streams, lakes, and reservoirs, and the protections afforded through wastewater treatment are the ground-level work that most people never think about until something goes wrong or you turn on the faucet or shower and nothing comes out.   As we confront these increasing challenges going forward, we must learn from our past experiences and embrace new and advanced technologies.

Industries should work to limit the production of pollutants, such as PFAS chemicals, that are known to harm the public and find ways to manufacture the products that are needed by the public, industries and others with less toxic chemistries. Additionally, industries must effectively treat contaminated wastewater to comply with permit requirements prior to discharge.  These are the important lessons that I’ve learned in my decades of experience in the water sector.  My experience provided an insider’s view of the gap between what science tells us and what the regulatory system actually does about it. On PFAS, that gap was, for too long, far too wide.

Let me be direct about what PFAS contamination is. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are a class of thousands of synthetic compounds in commercial use since the 1940s, found in firefighting foam, food packaging, non-stick coatings, industrial processes and even dental floss.  Importantly, these compounds don’t break down. They accumulate in the environment and in the human body. The human health effects linked to PFAS have emerged from decades of study and medical diagnosis. They include certain cancers, immune system disruption, thyroid effects, and developmental harm in children.  Confirmed studies back these effects and are serious enough that no responsible policymaker or industry leader should be comfortable with where we’ve been.

The U. S. Centers for Disease Control found detectable PFAS in the blood of virtually all Americans tested. Not just people near contaminated sites. Not just workers in affected industries, but the general population. Multiple exposure pathways include contaminated drinking water, food packaging, clothing, personal care products, and even our food chain itself, since PFAS applied to land through biosolids and can work its way into crops and livestock.   

At the federal level drinking water standards, while critically important, are not sufficient on their own.

Where the System Has Failed — and What We’ve Built

While in Washington, DC working the Office of Wastewater Management, I was responsible for leading the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System or NPDES program.  That permitting and oversight framework is one of the most powerful tools in the environmental protection toolkit. It is also slow to incorporate new science. Where PFAS is concerned, it has not kept pace. For years, PFAS was largely invisible in discharge permits covering more than 800,000 wastewater facilities across the country. No monitoring requirements, no numeric limits, no systematic tracking of how much PFAS was entering waterways from industrial sources. Industrial facilities and landfills generating significant PFAS loads had no regulatory obligation to address them. Municipalities receiving that industrial PFAS had no authority to push back.

The 2024 EPA started to work towards regulating PFAS in drinking water by setting a Safe Drinking Water Act, maximum contaminant levels or MCL for PFOA and PFOS at four parts per trillion in drinking water (along with 4 additional PFAS at higher levels).  This represents the kind of enforceable, science-based standard that should have existed earlier.

Additionally, the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act or CERCLA, hazardous substance designation for these PFAS compounds creates a legal mechanism for compelling cleanup. These are real tools, and they matter. But the industrial discharge framework still has serious gaps. PFAS-specific monitoring and numeric limits need to reach a much broader range of permit categories. Hazardous waste classification for PFAS-containing waste streams, such as spent treatment media, concentrated waste, and contaminated soils, needs to be clear and consistent. And the patchwork of state standards, while it reflects genuine urgency at the community level, needs clear and strong federal regulatory requirements to assure enforceability.

One aspect of the issue is how industrial PFAS loading has been transferred onto municipal wastewater treatment systems and the communities they serve. Unlike drinking water, conventional municipal wastewater treatment was never designed to remove these compounds. They pass through largely intact. The PFAS entering a municipal system from an industrial discharger ends up in treated effluent discharged to rivers, in biosolids spread on agricultural land, and in receiving waters that feed back into drinking water supplies. When a manufacturer discharges PFAS-containing wastewater to a municipal system, it isn’t managing its contamination. It’s dispersing it, at public expense.

Treatment, Waste, and the Technologies That Actually Eliminate the Problem

Currently, granular activated carbon and ion exchange are the most widely deployed technologies for PFAS removal in drinking water systems, and they work well, particularly for collecting long-chain compounds and some of the larger short-chain PFAS. However, both technologies transfer the problem rather than eliminate it. They generate spent media carrying the PFAS load and create a waste management challenge. Depending on future classification, the spent media may constitute hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act or RCRA, adding cost and liability to every treatment cycle. For industrial facilities where regulatory exposure is central to operational planning, this matters considerably.

Technologies have advanced in recent years.  I have been privileged to watch the emergence of several technologies that are now looking to scale beyond the bench.   I’ve been very encouraged in recent years by the development and deployment of the Aqueous Electrostatic Concentration or AEC. I joined the board of BioLargo Equipment Solutions and Technologies (BEST) because I believe it represents a meaningful advance, and I want to be transparent about that connection. AEC uses electrostatic forces to selectively concentrate PFAS from a variety of waters, including short-chain compounds that other technologies struggle with.  The AEC generates dramatically smaller waste volumes than conventional approaches. Smaller volumes mean lower disposal costs, reduced RCRA exposure, and a lower CERCLA liability footprint. For industrial facilities managing PFAS pretreatment before municipal discharge, the operational approach matters.  But what I’m most focused on beyond concentration and capture is destruction.

Every technology that removes PFAS and concentrates it into a waste stream is only a waste management solution that serves to move the problem from one media to another. Destruction technologies such as electro-oxidation, supercritical water oxidation, and plasma-based systems break the carbon-fluorine bond that makes PFAS persistent in the first place. They don’t create downstream disposal problems because they eliminate the molecule. These technologies are advancing from research toward commercial deployment, and the federal investment case for accelerating that trajectory is strong. It is important to note that the market for PFAS mitigation is large globally, and one solution will not be able to serve all the industries, utilities, and others.  I believe that there is room at the table for a variety of solution providers.

The Business Case Is Not Complicated

The resurgence of domestic manufacturing is something I support. Resilient supply chains, industrial jobs in communities that need them are legitimate national interests. My career at EPA, and before that at the state level in Texas, was rooted in the conviction that environmental protection and economic development are not opposing forces. But the return of manufacturing cannot mean a return to externalizing environmental costs onto communities and public budgets.

Forward-looking manufacturers understand this. A facility that engages proactively with permitting authorities, invests in pretreatment before discharging to municipal systems, and deploys treatment technologies that minimize waste volumes is managing its real long-term cost structure. CERCLA cleanups are enormously expensive. Municipal surcharges and flow restrictions for industrial dischargers failing to control PFAS are not hypothetical; they are already happening. Getting ahead of this is not complicated math.

What makes the business case work is a regulatory environment that is consistent and predictable. When some facilities manage PFAS responsibly, and others don’t, and when the consequences for non-compliance are slow and uncertain, responsible operators absorb a competitive disadvantage.

Strong, consistently enforced PFAS standards in drinking water, NPDES permits, in RCRA waste classification, and in municipal pretreatment programs creates a level playing field that industry needs. That is what EPA’s regulatory framework is supposed to provide.

What We Owe the Communities Still Waiting

My goal, the one that drove my work at EPA and continues to drive it now, is straightforward: every American city and town should have access to safe drinking water and effective wastewater treatment. There are communities that have been living with PFAS contamination in their drinking water for years, in some cases, decades. They are waiting for cleanup resources moving slowly through CERCLA. Waiting for treatment upgrades that depend on funding that is never fully adequate. Waiting for industrial sources upstream to be held to standards still being developed.

The science on PFAS is clear. The regulatory tools, though imperfect, exist. The treatment technologies are advancing. What is required now is the sustained institutional will to use all of them, at the scale the problem demands. I spent more than two decades at EPA because I believed and still believe that protecting people is critical. This challenge (in its full scope, from source control to treatment to destruction to cleanup) is the clearest test of that conviction the environmental field has faced in a generation.

It is past time to get it right.