Some 2.5 million Virginians have PFAS in their drinking water at higher levels than the legal limits recently put forth by the federal government. The numbers, which were self-reported to state regulators, identify public drinking utilities in Fairfax, Newport News, Norfolk, Roanoke and Charlottesville as exceeding the threshold. A full picture of PFAS contamination is not yet available because most water utilities haven’t reported any testing results to the state. That picture will become clearer in the coming years, as water utilities approach a federal deadline requiring they release test results. PFAS are a class of chemicals known for their unbreakable chemical bonds. Initially prized for their use in the chemical coating Teflon, PFAS are now widely viewed as toxic: exposure to PFAS has been linked with decreased fertility, developmental disabilities, and cancer.
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In 2023, three chemical companies — DuPont, Chemours and Corteva — agreed to pay a collective $1.2 billion to settle PFAS contamination claims made by water utilities that represented most Americans drinking water. The EPA set the first-ever drinking water standards to protect Americans from the chemicals in April 2024. In its announcement, the agency said the rules would “prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of PFAS-attributable illnesses.” At the moment, 274 Virginia water works have been tested from a total of over 2,800. Because testing is incomplete, it’s likely the total number of Virginians with PFAS in their water is an undercount. In the Richmond-region, one utility in Hanover reported a strain of PFAS at 4.2 parts per trillion, a shade over the EPA’s new threshold of 4 parts per trillion. The utilities that serve Chesterfield and Richmond did not have any PFAS exceedances, according to test results.
The sunset is seen over the Chickahominy River, Route 5 and the Capital Trail in Williamsburg. The Department of Environmental Quality is still in the process of confirming what caused PFAS-contamination in the White Oak neighborhood of Henrico County and turned up downstream in the Chickahominy River and Chesapeake Bay. The state’s PFAS response is shared between two state agencies, the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health. It is being steered by a committee created by the Virginia General Assembly in the 2024 legislative session. The resulting PFAS Expert Advisory Committee released the most recent results of water utility testing in its Dec. 16 meeting. The numbers come from the Department of Health, who receive it from utilities that have been early to volunteer the information. By 2027, all utilities will be made to report PFAS test results in accordance with rules set by the EPA. Using those results, the committee has prioritized different water systems according to how many constituents they serve and the severity of PFAS contamination. Currently, 10 water systems are ranked as “high priority.” That includes the Newport News, Fairfax, Roanoke and Norfolk water utilities. At least one utility said it had already resolved its contamination issue. The Charlottesville utility, the North Rivanna Water Treatment Plant, said in 2024 that it had removed contaminants from its water using special filters. Reached by phone, a spokesperson for the utility, Betsy Nemeth, said she viewed the high levels of PFAS found in 2023 as a fluke occurence. However, the results did temporarily trigger a shutdown of the utility, which Nemeth estimated serves around 10,000 customers. “At that point, there was no [PFAS] regulation. But we shut the plant,” said Nemeth. “We wanted to find out what was going on, we thought it was in our best interest.”
A slide from the PFAS Expert Advisory Committee's December 16 meeting indicating PFAS exceedances. Nemeth said the utility now tests twice a year, and that in 2024 neither test result was above the EPA’s enforceable limit of 4 parts per trillion. The utility was never able to identify the source of the 2023 PFAS contamination. The Hanover utility that turned up PFAS serves around 2,200 residents in the Spring Meadows neighborhood of Mechanicsville. It’s run by Aqua Virginia. In response to questions, the company's president, John Aulbach, said that PFAS treatment is planned for the Spring Meadows water system. "Aqua takes our commitment to remove PFAS seriously, even though we did not cause its presence in our source waters," said Aulbach in an emailed statement. "To minimize the cost of removing PFAS for our customers, we will pursue grants and our legal options through lawsuits against chemical manufacturers and others responsible for PFAS chemicals in our water sources." The DEQ is trying to identify out source points for PFAS. In that effort, it has a list of 184 companies who could be releasing PFAS into the environment. The list includes airports, tiremakers, plastics companies, and a range of industrial sites. But definitively tracing PFAS can be difficult. The agency
is still in the process of confirming what caused PFAS contamination in the White Oak neighborhood of Henrico County . That contamination affected at least 30 drinking wells and turned up downstream in the Chickahominy River and in the Chesapeake Bay. Carroll Courtenay, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, believes DEQ should do more to address PFAS contamination from industrial producers. “These numbers show the widespread nature of PFAS contamination in our drinking water and illustrate why we need to get ahead of the problem to the extent we can by stopping concentrated PFAS pollution streams from industrial sources,” said Courtenay. Courtenay suggested PFAS monitoring be woven into the same permits that the state gives to private companies under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Currently, those permits, which monitor carbon dioxide released into the air and nitrogen released into Virginia’s waterways, don’t include PFAS.
