EPA proposes PFAS policies for reporting and pollution reduction

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new policies to improve per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) reporting and pollution reduction.  

The agency has released a memorandum to states on how to use the nation’s bedrock clean water permitting program to protect against PFAS pollution. 

The guidance outlines how states can monitor PFAS discharges and take steps to reduce them where they are detected. This is part of the agency’s holistic approach to addressing these harmful chemicals under the EPA’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap.   

This action is a critical step in EPA’s efforts to restrict PFAS at their source, which will reduce the levels of PFAS entering wastewater and stormwater systems and ultimately lower people’s exposure to PFAS through swimming, fishing, drinking and other pathways.  

“[The] EPA is following through on its commitment to [empowering] states and communities across the nation to address known or suspected discharges of PFAS,” says EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox. “[This] builds upon successful and innovative efforts already used by several states to safeguard communities by using our Clean Water Act permitting program to identify and reduce sources of PFAS pollution before they enter our waters.”  

Related: US Composting Council calls to ban PFAS

The memorandum will align wastewater and stormwater national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permits and pretreatment program implementation activities with the EPA’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap. The memo recommends that states use the most current sampling and analysis methods in their NPDES programs to identify known or suspected sources of PFAS. It also urges states to take actions using their pretreatment and permitting authorities, like imposing technology-based limits on sources of PFAS discharges. The memo will also help the EPA obtain comprehensive information through monitoring the sources and quantities of PFAS discharges, informing other EPA efforts to address PFAS.

The EPA says several states have already demonstrated the benefits of leveraging their state-administered NPDES permit programs to identify and reduce sources of PFAS before they enter treatment facilities and surface waters. Michigan, for example, is partnering with municipal wastewater treatment facilities to develop monitoring approaches to help identify upstream sources of PFAS. The state has been able to leverage monitoring information to work with industries, like electroplating companies, to reduce PFAS discharges.

North Carolina has also successfully leveraged its NPDES program to develop facility-specific, technology-based effluent limits for known industrial dischargers of PFAS. This memo urges states to replicate these approaches and to identify and reduce PFAS discharges.  

The memo also provides recommendations to NPDES permit writers and pretreatment coordinators, rooted in the successful use of these tools in several states, on monitoring provisions, analytical methods, pollution prevention and best management practices. The EPA says these provisions will help reduce PFAS pollution in surface waters as the agency also works to promulgate effluent guidelines, finalize multiple lab analytical methods and publish water quality criteria that address PFAS compounds.  

The agency also proposed a rule that would improve reporting on PFAS to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) by eliminating an exemption that allows facilities to avoid reporting information on PFAS when those chemicals are used in small concentrations.  

TRI data are reported to the EPA annually by facilities in certain industry sectors and federal facilities that manufacture, process or otherwise use TRI-listed chemicals above specific quantities. The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) immediately added certain PFAS to the list of chemicals covered by TRI for the 2021 reporting year and provided a framework to automatically add other PFAS in the future.

The NDAA established TRI manufacturing, processing and otherwise use reporting thresholds of 100 pounds for each of these listed PFAS. However, the previous administration codified the NDAA provisions in a manner that allows facilities that report to TRI to disregard certain minimal, or de minimis, concentrations of chemicals in mixtures or trade name products. This means companies aren't required to report below 1 percent concentration for each of the TRI-listed PFAS, except for PFOA for which the concentration is set at .1 percent.  

“By removing this reporting loophole, we’re advancing the work set out in the agency’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap and ensuring that companies report information for even small concentrations of PFAS,” says EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “We’ll make this information available to the public so [the] EPA and other federal, state and local agencies can use it to help best protect health and the environment.”  

If finalized, it would also make the de minimis exemption unavailable for supplier notification requirements to downstream facilities for all chemicals on the list of chemicals of special concern. This also includes certain persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals like lead, mercury and dioxins.   

Related: Clean Harbors releases results of third-party study on PFAS