EPA Issues Draft Interim PFAS Guidelines For Public Comment
Dianne Phillips is a Partner in Holland & Knight's Boston office
On April 25, 2019, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced issuance of Draft Interim Recommendations to Address Groundwater Contaminated with Perfluorooctanoic Acid and Perfluorooctane Sulfonate. According to EPA, the guidance is based on the EPA's current scientific understanding of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) toxicity and is intended to provide clear and consistent guidance for federal cleanup programs, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, commonly referred to as Superfund). Specifically, the guidance provides recommendations on:
Screening levels, which are used to determine if levels of contamination may warrant further investigation; Preliminary remediation goals (PRGs) to inform site-specific cleanup levels for PFOA and PFOS contamination of groundwater that is a current or potential source of drinking water. According to the Posting Memorandum the guidelines will be open for public comment from April 25, 2019 through June 10, 2019. Comments may be submitted to the online docket. As described in a recent article in The New York Times, the OMB Review Redline shows substantial changes were made to the final draft posted for comment, which are likely to garner significant public interest.
Specifically, the entire section related to Removal Management Levels was deleted, including the below introductory section:
By definition, a removal action would not be used to address groundwater cleanup. It could, however, be an appropriate response action if the groundwater is, or could potentially be, used as drinking water. Removal management levels (RMLs) are a tool to help make a determination when an EPA removal action is warranted. RMLs are chemical- and media-specific concentrations that may be used to support a decision for EPA to undertake an action using CERCLA authority and funding (USEPA, 2018). The purpose of the RMLs is to help define areas, contaminants and conditions that may warrant a removal action at a site; they do not cover every conceivable situation that EPA might need to address in the remedial phases of a cleanup. Sites where contaminant concentrations fall below RMLs are not necessarily "clean," and further action or study may be warranted under the Superfund program (USEPA, 2018). For example, the NCP states that "actual or potential...
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