The EPA has announced final regulations setting drinking water limits for five PFAS compounds. The two most common chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, are limited to four parts per trillion, with a non-enforceable goal of zero, which is meant to indicate that any amount has negative health impacts.
Three other chemicals, PFNA, PFHxS and GenX, will each have a limit of 10 parts per trillion.
Advocates in Maine and around the country, including Sarah Woodbury of Defend Our Health, said the regulations mark a major milestone.
"With the lower standards, so many more people in the state of Maine will have clean drinking water," Woodbury said. "It's an incredible win for public health."
The regulations instruct public water systems to begin testing for PFAS in the next three years, and make those results available to the public. Water systems that test over the new limits must address the contamination by 2029.
The EPA has also announced nearly a billion dollars in funds for states to help test and treat public water supplies and private wells. Woodbury said that's important for Maine, where many residents have private wells, and often have to cover maintenance costs themselves.
But the limits come too late for those who have been drinking contaminated water, and are suffering the harmful health impacts, said Dana Colihan with the national community action group, Slingshot.
"In many ways, this ruling is late," Colihan said. "There are many, many people who have lost their lives to health impacts that are linked to exposure to PFAS contamination."
In 2021, Maine passed an interim drinking water standard of 20 parts per trillion. Unlike the new EPA limits, Maine's standard was not set for individual chemicals, but for the total presence of six compounds.
Since then, the state has begun testing wells for PFAS, and has directed municipal water systems to test as well. But with the new stricter limits from the EPA, Colihan said some of these systems will be out of compliance.
"This will trigger action steps that communities across the state will have to take to provide clean drinking water for Mainers," she said.
That includes the Greater Augusta Utility District, where general manager Brian Tarbuck said tests of the district's Riverside Station last year found 4.66 parts per trillion of PFOA. This was well under the Maine standard, but now just over the EPA limit.
Tarbuck said the regulation is not surprising, and that the district is already in the process of testing a filtration system.
"Knowing that we're above four and a couple of our tests, we said, 'Well, we gotta jump on this now, before everybody else needs the same pilot systems that we need right now,'" he said.
Tarbuck said it's difficult to estimate how much a filtration system will cost the district to install and maintain, but the only other option is to stop using the well entirely.
"One thing that our board could choose to do is say it's gonna be so expensive to do this, and they will just abandon the wells," he said. "And that's, unfortunately, a decision that I think a lot of folks may be faced with."
There are two chemicals — PFHpA and PFDA — that are listed under Maine's PFAS limits, but not the EPA's. Woodbury said she wants the state to keep the 20 parts per trillion standard for those compounds in place.
