Kelso
Columbus’ utility director said he expects the city to take steps to join nationwide settlements reached with manufacturers of long-lasting and highly toxic chemicals called PFAS that are linked to cancer and other illnesses and were recently detected in the city’s lone water source.
The decision to join the settlements, which could be made as early as next month, comes about two months after city officials said they shut down a municipal well between Garden City and the railroad tracks on the south side of Columbus after testing by state regulators found PFAS at levels that exceed proposed federal limits.
City utility Director Roger Kelso said he hopes to be able to use settlement funds to offset some of the costs of installing and operating treatment technology to filter out the chemicals.
Kelso said he expects the Utility Service Board to consider a motion on Nov. 16 to recommend taking steps to join settlements reached in class-action lawsuits with 3M Co., DuPont de Nemours Inc. and two DuPont spinoffs over contaminating water systems across the country with PFAS.
“It will be a surprise to me if we don’t (join them),” he said. “… And it is my recommendation to go forward with them.”
PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are a cluster of industrial chemicals associated with a variety of serious health conditions and have been used in products ranging from cookware to carpets and firefighting foams and consumer products since the 1940s, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Research suggests exposure to certain levels of PFAS can lead to reproductive effects in humans, developmental delays, increased risks for certain cancers, elevated cholesterol levels and weakening of the immune system, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The substances are sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down naturally in the environment — or do so slowly — and can remain in a person’s blood indefinitely.
The issue of PFAS contamination has received more attention in recent years as the chemicals have been detected at varying levels in drinking water around the country and new research has suggested that the chemicals pose health risks at far lower levels than previously thought.
In the now-closed Columbus well, PFOA was detected in untreated water at 45 parts per trillion, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, which tested the city’s wells as part of a voluntary program to measure prevalence of the chemicals in public water systems across the state.
PFOA also was found in Columbus’ finished drinking water at 7 parts per trillion. PFOS was detected at 9 parts per trillion in one city well.
IDEM has collected additional samples to confirm the results but city officials have yet to receive them.
Earlier this year, the EPA proposed strict limits of 4 parts per trillion in treated drinking water for two common types of PFAS — PFOA and PFOS — and said it wanted to regulate four others. Regulators also set nonbinding health advisories for PFOA and PFOS at 0.02 parts per trillion.
To put the proposed regulation and health advisory in perspective, 1 part per trillion is roughly the equivalent of a single drop of water in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools, experts said.
If the proposed EPA limits take effect, water providers, including Columbus City Utilities, would be responsible for monitoring their systems for the chemicals and filtering them, a task that industry groups say is technically challenging and costly.
Faced with the burden of cleanup efforts, water utilities and others have filed thousands of lawsuits against 3M Co., DuPont and two other PFAS manufacturers, seeking financial damages to cover the costs of removing the chemicals from their systems and complying with the proposed federal limits.
In June, 3M Co. agreed to pay at least $10.5 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits alleging that the company contaminated public drinking water systems across the country with PFAS, The Associated Press reported.
Earlier that month, DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc. reached a $1.18 billion settlement to resolve lawsuits over PFAS contamination filed by around 300 drinking water providers, according to wire reports.
None of the companies admitted wrongdoing.
However, environmental activists and industry groups have expressed concern that costs of cleansing PFAS from water systems across the country will far exceed the settlement amounts and government projections, though estimates have greatly varied.
The American Water Works Association has estimated that U.S. drinking water utilities will need to invest more than $50 billion to install and operate treatment technology over the next 20 years to comply with proposed federal standards.
A recent survey by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies suggests that operational costs for water utilities will increase by 60% due to the proposed PFAS rules.
In June, a study commissioned by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency estimated that it would cost between $14 billion to $28 billion over 20 years to remove PFAS from wastewater streams — just in Minnesota.
The American Water Works Association said PFAS remediation will require long-term operation and maintenance of drinking water and wastewater, including regular monitoring, system maintenance, replacement of filters and disposal of waste generated during the process, which also could prove costly “due to the specialized processes and facilities required.”
“The bottom line is that PFAS clean-up costs for water sector utilities — which never produced nor profited from PFAS in the first place — will be substantial, especially for large-scale or long-term remediation projects,” the association said.
Kelso, for his part, said he does not anticipate that any potential local allotment of settlement funds will fully cover the costs of filtering out PFAS from the city’s drinking water. That would likely mean that the city would need to raise rates to cover the rest, though how much they would need to be raised, it at all, remains to be seen.
City officials are still working with consultants to determine the most cost-effective option.
The most promising option right now for removing PFAS from water involves activated carbon treatment, which uses specialized filters to absorb compounds, according to the EPA. The filters would look like silos outside of the treatment plants and can be expensive, Kelso said.
“We could be looking at somewhere around $30 million (in cleanup costs),” Kelso said, emphasizing that the figure is a “very preliminary estimate.” “… To implement the project, we would have to raise rates.”
