As WA tackles PFAS pollution, some worry about ‘piecemeal’ approach

State-mandated testing revealed a San Juan Island community was drinking toxic water. But who is responsible for paying for a new water source?

The question is one public officials are grappling with as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are found in drinking water sources and watersheds across the state.

In Washington, there are about 2,400 public water systems that are required to test for PFAS. Roughly half of them have done those tests, with about 250 having detected the chemicals in the water, but that doesn’t count thousands of households who drink from private wells, which are not subject to state testing requirements.

Some communities in the shadow of military bases may get help from the Pentagon if water contamination is linked to military activities. Meanwhile, public water systems must seek state or federal grant funding or shoulder the expensive burden themselves. In Lakewood, for example, the cost of a massive filtration system exceeded $5 million.

For communities where a source of contamination has yet to be identified, or those that don’t have deep pockets, the answer is a bit murkier.

Hannah Heights, a small neighborhood of roughly four dozen households on west San Juan Island, received $2.2 million from the state Legislature as a line item in the capital budget to help drill a new well after testing revealed concentrations of PFAS up to 164 times the level considered safe by the state.

It’s among one of the first times the state has offered to pay to remediate a community’s drinking water source with state cleanup dollars since new testing rules went into effect and as public officials face a reckoning in cleaning up some of the most pervasive chemicals in the world.

It raises the question of whether the state’s toxic cleanup fund can even come close to addressing the scope of the problem. The state Department of Ecology estimates the cost of cleaning up a single contaminated site could range from $5 million to $63 million.

As public officials begin to grasp the breadth of the human and environmental health issue, the question remains: Who will pay?

‘A template for other communities’

Hannah Heights, a community on an otherwise pristine archipelago, was rattled in April when a test of its drinking water found some of the highest-known concentrations of PFAS in the state.

The highest levels have often been found around places where firefighting foams containing the substances were used in training exercises for decades. The Hannah Heights well is a stone’s throw from the neighborhood’s fire station, although the source of the pollution has not yet been investigated.

“There’s been examples where they’ve found contamination because it’s adjacent to a fire station,” said Sen. Liz Lovelett, D-Anacortes. “We can’t be trying to get them to pay for things like that because ultimately we need them to continue providing fire services.”

Typically, the source of the pollution pays for the cleanup and remediation. In some cases, when communities find their drinking water source is contaminated, they don’t yet know the source of the chemicals, or the source of the contamination may not have the means to pay for the cleanup.

In Spokane County, for example, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state are overseeing cleanup led by the military at Fairchild Air Force Base, the state is overseeing cleanup at the local airport and some residents are receiving a combination of state and federal assistance.

“Hannah Heights is an interesting situation because we have a small fire station, who doesn’t have a lot of funding, so there’s no viable entity that’s responsible,” said Barry Rogowski, toxics cleanup program manager for Ecology. “We believe that the small fire station did use firefighting foam and practice with it, which has contaminated the Hannah Heights neighborhood well, and so there, we’ve had to come up with some creative solutions.”

PFAS — called “forever chemicals” because they take centuries to break down — has been manufactured since the 1950s by 3M, DuPont and others. In addition to firefighting, PFAS also has been widely used to create everyday items like nonstick pans, fast food packaging and waterproof clothing.

PFAS has been found in the blood of polar bears and 98% of Americans and is linked to several health disorders, including cancer.

The state Attorney General’s Office joined a multidistrict lawsuit against nearly two dozen PFAS manufacturers, asserting the companies knew about the risks to the environment and humans for decades but lied and kept that knowledge hidden from the government and public to protect their businesses. PFAS was deemed as “toxic” in a 3M technical manual in the 1960s.

“Even if the AG’s office is successful with every claim that they filed, 3M is going to be bankrupt before we know it, and then where does that money come from?” Lovelett said. “And there’s going to have to be some responsibility for just making sure that people can stay in their homes.”

While receiving some help for months from the state to obtain bottled water, Hannah Heights residents appealed to lawmakers for a permanent solution. Their grant application included the estimated costs of preengineering, drilling the well, piping and distribution of the water.

“We perhaps provide a template for other communities,” said Hannah Heights resident Sarah Severn.

Lovelett secured the $2.2 million from the Model Toxics Control Act account, known as the state’s cleanup law, which residents believe will fund the entire project.

In the current budget biennium, lawmakers appropriated about $585 million for toxic cleanup programs across the state.

This fiscal year, MTCA is forecast to generate $86 million for capital expenditures, like Hannah Heights’ new well, but it’s not enough for the scope of the statewide problem.

MTCA is funded through a tax on producers of over 8,000 hazardous substances like petroleum products, pesticides and other chemicals. The tax charges $1.40 per 42 gallons of liquid petroleum products, like gasoline.

A ‘piecemeal’ approach

The state in 2022 published a PFAS Chemical Action Plan, to assess the environmental and health effects of the substances and recommend strategies to reduce or eliminate them.

The plan “was not designed to answer the growing budget questions faced by many local governments and agencies with PFAS cleanup needs,” said Andrew Wineke, deputy communications director at Ecology.

The state Legislature instructed the state departments of Ecology and Health to draw up a funding strategy based on the plan by Dec. 1. But the potential costs of the cleanups statewide are daunting.

“We recognized that relying solely on the Model Toxics Control Act — our state’s primary tool guiding and funding cleanup work — was not going to be sufficient,” Wineke said.

The goal of the funding strategy is to map out potential sources targeting a range of scenarios.

“There is going to be a wide variety of different situations from very, very small, community-based fire departments that have used foam, some dry cleaners have used PFAS, all the way up to small municipal airports, fire training centers, all the way up to large federal installations,” he said.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced $10 billion for states to help identify and respond to PFAS contamination. Washington received $33 million, which has been available through grants and loans.

While the state funding strategy is still not finalized, Laurie Valeriano, the executive director of the nonprofit Toxic-Free Future, said organizations like hers have not yet been consulted. She hopes there will be further community engagement to ensure sensitive or highly pollution-burdened communities have a say.

The state anticipates public discussions as lawmakers deliberate on the budget, Wineke said.

The Healthy Environment for All Act requires that Ecology and other agencies aim to provide 40% of its grants and expenditures to health and pollution-overburdened communities.

Valeriano also feels the state’s action on PFAS cleanup thus far has been “piecemeal.”

“While grants are good, we would like to see Ecology carry out a strategic, comprehensive approach to investigating sources and mitigating drinking water [contamination],” Valerino said.

In Michigan and Colorado, state leaders have established coordinated PFAS response plans.

Through a 2017 executive order, the Michigan governor created a centralized team of seven state agencies to coordinate research, identify PFAS contamination and implement solutions with local health departments. Valeriano said Michigan has implemented its PFAS strategy with input from affected communities. “It creates transparency,” she said.

A few years ago, Colorado established a tax on hazardous substances similar to Washington’s MTCA, specific to PFAS products. The money addresses contamination from firefighting foam and other PFAS sources.

MTCA became law decades before PFAS was considered a hazardous substance and today doesn’t tax those products.

“MTCA makes a lot of sense because the fund is primarily generated by a tax on oil hazardous substances,” Valeriano said, and firefighting foams, the primary source of PFAS contamination in drinking water, were designed to address fires generated by fuels. “It’s a real direct line.”