Officials at Fairfax Water are bracing for one-time and ongoing costs that could approach a half-billion dollars over the next decade to comply with new federal environmental regulations.
Unless workarounds are found, most of the costs of addressing the looming impact of chemicals known as PFAS will be borne by its customers, the agency’s head told the Board of Supervisors’ Environment Committee on Tuesday (Oct. 29).
Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances are a group of about 10,000 manmade chemicals developed beginning in the 1940s and found in everything from food and packaging to cosmetics and non-stick cookware.
Under authority from the National Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated in April that water-distribution systems with PFAS levels above 4 parts per trillion take remediation efforts to remove the pollutants.
Federal officials say limiting exposure to PFAS could reduce health issues, including deadly cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children.
While water acquired by Fairfax Water from the Potomac River falls below that threshold, water from the Occoquan River has been gauged at 5.5 parts per trillion. That could trigger some pricey remediation at its Griffith Water Treatment Plant, which distributes up to 120 million gallons of water to customers per day.
Local leaders are concerned about the cost as well as the timeline. Unless the deadline is pushed back, water plants will be required to meet the new requirements by 2029. Approximately 100 million Americans live in areas that could be impacted.
The EPA’s proposed deadline “is inadequate for the kind of infrastructure we will have to build,” Fairfax Water General Manager Jamie Hedges told supervisors.
Fairfax Water estimates that the cost of incorporating specialized filters and retrofitting equipment at the Griffith facility could cost $400 million in capital outlays over six years, with an additional annual operating cost of $24 million.
To date, neither the state nor the federal government have shown much inclination to help fund improvements at the local level, Hedges said.
As a result, the burden could be passed down to Fairfax Water’s retail customers, including more than 1 million Fairfax County residents and 632,000 office workers, as well as the nearby jurisdictions that purchase their water on a wholesale basis from the agency.
The $400 million cost “is a staggering figure,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said, as board members sought ways to get the water plant below the EPA’s threshold without making major infrastructure improvements to get there.
“We’re not that far above,” Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn observed.
However, time is running out, assuming the EPA holds firm in its 2029 deadline. According to Hedges, the water agency has about 12 to 18 months to get a game plan in place to address the situation.
“We are looking at every available option,” she said.
The utility could work with owners of large tracts of land abutting the Occoquan. Reducing the high concentrations of PFAS in the runoff from those properties before they reach the river could help get Fairfax Water within the EPA guidelines.
The Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department is ahead of the curve, moving to new-generation fire-retardant foam that doesn’t contain PFAS, officials told the board. County officials are working to meet with representatives of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to gauge what steps could be taken at Northern Virginia’s two commercial airports.
While a significant factor, water isn’t the biggest contributor to PFAS in daily life. Two-thirds of a human’s exposure comes from food and related packaging materials, Hedges said.
