Conference Agenda

“Forever Chemicals,” parts per trillion, Health Action Levels, “over 5,000 chemicals,” “found in everyday products”—these phrases are common in articles and communications about PFAS to the public. To the general public, they are hard to put into context. They can be confusing, if not frightening, leading to lots of questions that are hard to answer. With the technical nature of PFAS removal and the developing research about PFAS health impacts, providing clear concise information to the public is challenging.

Meanwhile the water and wastewater industries are working hard to reduce the amounts of PFAS in drinking water, treated wastewater, and biosolids; doing research to know more about risks; and developing and testing new technologies for PFAS removal. It is increasingly critical for the public to understand risks and the steps that their utilities are taking to work on this issue.

There is a strong need for clear, timely, and proactive communication on PFAS removal. Public awareness can build support and the understanding water utilities will need to invest in and implement programs to address PFAS and other future challenges.

Becca Fong and Rachel Garrett will show how using best communications practices creates an increased level of engagement and an understanding of PFAS risk in wastewater and biosolids. They will present examples of how to integrate strategic engagement early in the process, how to work with technical teams to support the development of sound messaging and provide examples of how stakeholder engagement and community outreach work together to create clear, accurate, and timely risk communications for positive outcomes.

PFAS are a contaminant of major concern for WRRFs due to current and imminent state and federal regulations as well as increasing concern from the public. Because WRRFs are not designed to destroy or remove PFAS, source control will be an extremely important mechanism for reducing PFAS concentrations at WRRFs. For effective source control, an understanding of the dominant sources of PFAS to the WRRF is critical. However, PFAS are frequently detected in domestic, commercial, and industrial wastewater discharges with varying concentrations and are complicated by the presence of ‘precursors’ and PFAS-like compounds. A method is needed for identifying and addressing the site-specific dominant sources of PFAS to a WRRF.

While some states have propagated regulations to land-application of biosolids due to PFAS concerns, little is known about the fate of PFAS in land-applied biosolids, and even less is known about the fate of PFAS in land-applied reuse water. To protect the environment as well as protect beneficial biosolids and reuse applications, a better understanding of the fate of PFAS is needed in soils, groundwater, and surface waters.

Since 2019, Clean Water Services (CWS) has been conducting regular PFAS monitoring at the WRRFs, the collection system, and industries. Some of the results of this study were presented at PNCWA in 2022. Since that time, CWS has expanded the monitoring to include soils at biosolids and reuse land-application sites, groundwater at reuse irrigation sites, surface waters around the watershed, and more industries. CWS also has been collecting PFAS data from sewersheds dominated by a single land-use to help identify the dominant sources of PFAS to the WRRFs. Throughout the monitoring, CWS has been working with industries with high measured PFAS and/or high flows to develop PFAS Management Plans. Much has been learned about the contribution of WRRF discharges to the PFAS burden in surface waters, the fate of PFAS in land-applied reuse and biosolids, the dominant sources of PFAS to the WRRFs, and the effectiveness of outreach efforts. This talk will report the findings of these efforts since last year, lessons learned, and our PFAS roadmap for the next three years.