The Environmental Protection Agency has until May 12 to make a move in a lawsuit filed by two leading water utility membership groups against the agency last year for rules regulating the presence of certain PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water.
Those “forever chemicals” are linked to up to a 33% higher incidence rate of certain cancers in communities exposed to them through drinking water, according to a federally-funded study published earlier this year by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The EPA rules being challenged in court are the first legally-enforceable PFAS limits for water utilities.
Nationwide, an estimated 45% of tap water contains at least one type of PFAS, according to a 2023 study by researchers from the United States Geological Survey. Meanwhile, in Central Florida, a recent analysis of PFAS levels in freshwater springs revealed the state’s three most contaminated springs are all within a 10-mile radius in Deltona.
Volusia’s Green Spring was the most contaminated by PFAS, followed by Blue and Gemini Springs, according to samples taken from each spring’s vent, where water from the aquifer first emerges from the ground.
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“With groundwater providing 90% of the consumable water in Florida, it is crucial that ∑PFAS [total PFAS] concentrations fall under regulated thresholds to mitigate health threats to citizens and visitors,” according to that University of Florida study.
Suzanne Scheiber, founder of the environmental advocacy group Dream Green Volusia, collected the UF study’s Volusia County water samples. Since the study’s results came in late last year, she’s helped spread the word to local municipalities like Deltona, which recently joined an ongoing, national lawsuit against manufacturers of certain products containing PFAS.
“It is a very difficult position to be in as a city, to have pollution in your water,” Scheiber said. “I was really, really pleased that Deltona addressed it, and tackled it right out in public view.”
The city signed onto the case following a December City Council presentation from one of the plaintiff attorneys, James Ferraro, Jr., an environmental lawyer based in Miami. Ferraro is representing about 20 public water systems, including Deltona and DeLand, in the national lawsuit.
“The water utility doesn’t add PFAS to their water … These manufacturers did,” Ferraro said.
As early as this month, some of Ferraro’s clients could start seeing settlement money from the multi-billion-dollar companies implicated in that lawsuit, like 3M and DuPont. But even still, while it’s “a good start,” Ferraro said, settlements won’t be enough to cover the full cost of monitoring and treating drinking water for PFAS contamination.
“The costs are astronomical, in some situations,” Ferraro said. “The stakes are pretty high there for some public water systems … Some of them are better positioned than others.”
Ferraro isn’t involved in the separate lawsuit against EPA. But he says some of his water utility clients are concerned about how to fund improvements necessary for complying with the agency’s regulatory framework currently under challenge. As of now, water utilities have until 2027 to test for 29 PFAS, and until 2029 to reduce contamination levels for six regulated PFAS in the drinking water supply, according to the EPA.
“Four parts per trillion (ppt) is basically the lowest you could go,” Ferraro said, referencing the EPA’s current limit for two of the most common types of PFAS in drinking water, PFOA and PFOS. Meanwhile, the legally-enforceable limits for other contaminants in drinking water are generally set at higher, parts-per-million concentrations.
“So if you go to parts per trillion, obviously, it says EPA is worried about it,” Ferraro said. “There's an issue; it's a concern for public health.”
But to meet the low legal threshold of 4 ppt, some public water utilities will need to retrofit or build entirely new water treatment plants, a cost many already-struggling utilities won’t be able to absorb without additional support, Ferraro said.
“Our position has always been: it needs to be zero parts per trillion; it shouldn't be in the water at any level,” Ferraro said. “But they [regulatory agencies] do, at some level, have to consider the costs and the financial burdens of this. And the scope of this problem is huge.”
While he’d love to see the EPA keep the threshold for PFAS at 4 ppt, Ferraro said the agency also needs to prepare to help water systems meet that threshold.
“They also, with that, need to come up with some funding at the federal level, to help water systems,” Ferraro said.
Although EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin recently announced the agency would “combat PFAS contamination” via a range of methods, he didn’t share many specifics. Ferraro called it a “very preliminary” announcement
Meanwhile, the Trump administration on Friday announced a significant reorganization of the EPA is coming soon, including major staffing cuts to the agency’s scientific research arm. Researchers in that office were among the first to identify sources of PFAS as health hazards, over a decade ago.
