Leader Telegram: Van Orden discusses PFAS on visit to water treatment facility
EAU CLAIRE — U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden toured the City of Eau Claire Water Treatment Facility and learned about ways to remove PFAS from the water and the new facility planned to do it.
Exposure to some types of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, has been associated with serious health effects, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s page on PFAS.
In 2020, the facility, including Community Services Director Lane Berg, tested the water for PFAS. They found their PFAS level was 17 parts per trillion, under the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource’s proposed standard of 70 parts per trillion.
The next year, the Department of Health Services created a hazard index. The facility found while the PFA level was still lower than the DNR’s standard, the city’s water was slightly higher than the hazard index.
Since that discovery, the facility has taken actions to prevent the spread of PFAS to the rest of the wells.
“We did some piping into the well field and we created 30 acres worth of absorption ponds so that we could take water from the wells on the the north end of our well field that have high concentrations of PFAS and pump those into those absorption ponds. That keeps the PFAS plume from spreading down to our good wells,” said Berg.
This has reduced the PFAS level to about 5.2 parts per trillion. The facility has also been testing ways to remove PFAS from the water and plans to create a new building for the process.
Van Orden is a member of the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee within the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. He said it is incredibly important in 2023 for people to be able to turn on their faucets and drink clean water.
Van Orden has already reached out for funding for the facility through the Fiscal Year 2024 Interior Appropriations bill, which was passed in the House.
“We’re going to get $2 million dollars to help this water treatment facility in Eau Claire to get their building built,” said Van Orden.
Van Orden said he wouldn’t know why the bill would not be passed through the Senate and signed by President Biden.
“Water is non-partisan,” said Van Orden. “Public safety is non-partisan. There’s so many things that you can fight about in Washington D.C. This should never be one of them.”
The first stop on Van Orden’s tour was the pipe gallery, where the facility was testing ways to remove PFAS from water. The process that showed the most promise was ion exchange, which will be used in the new facility.
Van Orden was also shown where manganese and iron are removed from the water and where it is filtered one more time. The water is also given fluoride and chloramines before being distributed to Eau Claire and the Town of Washington.
One potential source of the PFAS is through firefighting foam used during a simulated crash, said Berg. The Chippewa Valley Regional Airport is required by the Federal Aviation Administration to simulate this crash once every year.
“The firefighting foam, they’ve been named by the DNR as a potentially responsible party…” said Berg. ”Then that foam gets into the soil and then anytime it rains, or when it snows and the snow melts, it carries that PFAS with the water down into our groundwater table.”
Van Orden said if the federal government requires they use the foam and it contaminates groundwater then they should be responsible for cleaning it up.
Berg said they have also received $1.66 million from Tammy Baldwin’s office and will receive $3.5 million in principal forgiveness from the DNR.
Van Orden finished the tour with a presentation on what the new facility will look like.
“We’re very thankful for Derrick Van Orden visiting us and listening to our story and we’d like to thank them for what they’ve done for us already and applying on our behalf for some grant money,” said Berg. “We need partnerships like that to pay for a project like this.”