Deer Park has joined national litigation against manufacturers of ‘forever chemicals’

After finding PFAS in three of its eight water sources, the city of Deer Park is joining national litigation against manufacturers of the chemicals.

PFAS is a family of thousands of chemicals found in the environment, in various foods, and in many commercial consumer and industrial products. The group is sometimes called “forever chemicals” because of its resistance to breaking down and becoming inert.

Mike LaScuola, environmental health specialist with the Spokane Regional Health District, said in an email that although research is ongoing, PFAS chemicals have been linked to increased cholesterol levels, lighter birth weights, decreased immune response to vaccines, increased risk to thyroid disease and increased risk of some cancers.

“It is more about what we don’t know that is concerning and worth considering, because these forever chemicals are present in some quantity in all of us. There are thousands of different compounds, and we are still learning much about the health effects on humans and animals,” he said.

PFAS has been in some of Deer Park’s water supply at relatively constant levels for 20-plus years, but the state didn’t include PFAS in its water testing requirements until 2022.

“We had volunteered to have some free sampling done both by the Department of Health with the state of Washington and the EPA,” said Roger Krieger, community service director with the city. “When the Department of Health did their testing, lo and behold, three of our different sources showed up with levels, various levels, of detects relative to PFAS or PFOA in the water.”

PFAS chemicals have been found in water supplies nationwide, leading to litigation throughout the country against manufacturers of PFAS, including 3M and DuPont. Due to the bulk of cases against these manufacturers, many cases have been joined in a multidistrict litigation case overseen by a federal judge in South Carolina. Deer Park has decided to join that litigation.

PFAS levels in Deer Park water are not in violation of state laws but may surpass federal limits once the Environmental Protection Agency passes its updated and more stringent PFAS regulations, which they plan to release by the end of this year.

“We’ve tested for constituents that are below the state action level but are going to be potentially above the federal limits assuming they get modified as they keep talking about doing,” Krieger said.

The city is already in violation of federal standards in one of its three contaminated sources.

“We are in violation now of the federal standard, it’s a lot lower than the state standard,” Krieger said. Addressing the federal violation in that water source could prove to be difficult as “right now it’s the highest producing source.”

The EPA sets the limit for both PFOS and PFOA (the two most common members of the PFAS family of chemicals) at 4 parts per trillion. State action levels sit at 10 ppt for PFOA and 15 ppt for PFOS. Deer Park’s PFAS levels in its various water sources sit just above and just below the federal standard. According to the Department of Health, the city’s highest level of PFAS is in water source 3, at 6.2 ppt, a violation of EPA requirements.

Comparatively, PFAS levels in Airway Heights water reached over 1,000 ppt in 2017, when the contamination was discovered.

The legal counsel with whom Deer Park has partnered will not be paid unless they obtain a recovery cost for the city.

“They end up getting a percentage of whatever comes out of it from a settlement and stuff in the future of handling all the cost and stuff associated with it,” Krieger said. “We’re just trying to cover all of our bases should we have to go down a path of dealing with PFAS from a treatment-level standpoint.”

The Deer Park City Council voted unanimously in favor of joining the litigation. Councilman Caleb Stapp said he voted in favor of the litigation “to make it possible for Deer Park citizens to possibly get some help with any repairs that are required in the future by the state or the feds.”

Stapp is more skeptical of government regulation of forever chemicals than he is concerned about potential health effects.

“At this point, I don’t believe there are any issues with our water, it’s simply that the feds have decided to raise the requirements for what they consider to be safe, and yet we’ve been perfectly fine in the last several decades with no issues with where our levels are currently at,” he said. “To me, it seems more like an overreach by our federal government rather than any pressing safety issue.”

Once federal PFAS regulations are updated, Stapp wants Deer Park to have the resources to take action.

“We are joining this litigation because there may be a requirement from the federal government in the future to treat our water even more than it currently is,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re prepared for that major expense.”

The city hopes their involvement in the multidistrict litigation will help to bring down the cost for consumers.

“We have a population of 4,950 right now,” Krieger said. “It’s a chance to save them some money should we get funding to help offset the cost.”

Unlike the City of Airway Heights, which determined firefighting foam used at the nearby Fairchild Air Force Base as the source of their contamination, the City of Deer Park doesn’t know what the source of the PFAS is.

“No one knows, that’s the strange thing about it. I mean, the Fairchild was a big hit because that was an easy source to point to, but we don’t have that,” Krieger said. The city’s most recent water quality report pointed to “spills, use and accidental contamination” as the likely source of the chemicals.

The city also doesn’t know how much a potential treatment for PFAS would cost.

“Even though we had nothing to do with the causing it, somebody’s going to get the bill and ultimately it goes back to the ratepayers as always, kind of as a last resort. But we don’t even know how much it might be, that’s kind of the nuance of the whole thing,” Krieger said.

When water sources are in violation of state action levels, cities are often faced with two options: treating that water, typically through filtration, or finding another water source.

Kara Kostanich, a Spokesperson with the Washington State Department of Health, said in an email that costs for treating PFAS-contaminated water through filtration can range from $15,000 to $100,000.

“The costs and time to install vary greatly depending on the concentration of PFAS in the water, the amount of water used and the rest of the raw water quality,” she said.

Krieger mentioned shutting off the violating water source, as well as dilution, as potential options in bringing down PFAS contamination levels.

“If we could test throughout the system and show that it’s under based on blending or something like that, maybe that’s the answer, but we’ll see where it goes,” he said.