Survey’s top-three ranking would launch PFAS rulemaking, Wood says
The Trump administration has stalled approval of a first-of-its-kind federal survey that would help regulators identify which industries are the largest contributors of PFAS “forever chemicals” in wastewater, according to two former Environmental Protection Agency officials who helped develop the study. The survey of wastewater treatment plants was submitted to the White House for approval nearly two years ago during the Biden administration — a far longer wait than is typical for such reviews, the former officials said.
Many wastewater treatment plants receive PFAS-contaminated waste, and a nationwide survey of hundreds of plants would help identify the source of that PFAS and could inform new regulations to limit their spread, according to Robert Wood, who served as director of the engineering and analysis division in the EPA’s Office of Water before his retirement in 2024. The survey was designed to be the first of its kind.
Wood was one of two former EPA officials who helped develop the study. “If we can determine the top one, the top two, the top three” industries that dump PFAS, Wood said, “then we start work on the detailed studies and the regulation to get after nationwide limits on PFAS for the predominant industrial dischargers.”
A public notice about the survey’s status shows it was submitted to the White House for approval during the Biden administration and has not been approved since. The two former officials said the wait was far longer than is typical for similar surveys.
Without the survey’s results, federal regulators will continue to lack a comprehensive national picture of which industries are the dominant contributors of PFAS contamination through wastewater — a gap the agency had designed the survey to close.