Utilities Brace for Costs of Compliance With New PFAS Water Rule

Water utilities will face costly challenges meeting the EPA’s new limits on PFAS in drinking water, making litigation nearly inevitable, lawyers and analysts say.

The standards will effectively require drinking water systems to remove any PFAS they detect in their drinking water, and affect many more water systems than the Environmental Protection Agency expects, sparking “a number of legal challenges,” said David Edelstein, partner at Archer & Greiner PC.

When the EPA on Wednesday finalized the first-ever limits on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water, it set safe amounts of the “forever chemicals” to nearly zero.