The Trump EPA’s just-released multi-media plan to address PFAS provides few details of what regulatory and other actions officials will eventually take, but environmentalists and others say they expect the agency to delay and roll back some of what the Biden administration crafted while also dropping some key items.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is “planning to re-do everything the Biden people did, which automatically means he’s going to delay for years . . . any kind of regulation,” says Betsy Southerland, a former top EPA career official who is now with the Environmental Protection Network.
Furthermore, Southerland says, she expects the Trump EPA to weaken “whatever the Biden people had tried to do.”
At issue is EPA’s April 28 plan to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination. The plan calls for the appointment of a lead official and generally maintains much of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda to address PFAS.
Some observers see the plan continuing to implement some Biden administration measures.
Administrator Zeldin’s announcement indicates that “EPA plans to advance certain Biden-era PFAS regulatory efforts” such as the proposed Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) rule designating nine PFAS as hazardous constituents under RCRA and developing effluent limitation guidelines (ELGs) for certain sectors under the Clean Water Act, attorneys at Beveridge and Diamond say in an April 29 post.
But the lawyers also note that Zeldin’s approach differs from the Biden PFAS Roadmap in several key ways, including an increased focus on air and working with Congress to propose a liability framework centered on “polluter pays” principles.
Zeldin also plans to designate a single, agency-wide PFAS lead, whereas the Biden administration relied on a multi-member EPA Council on PFAS, the lawyers say. And they note that Zeldin’s plan also promises annual updates to PFAS Destruction and Disposal Guidance, rather than the three-year schedule current law requires.
But in many cases, the plan seeks to ease, replace or overhaul Biden-era actions, while in others it omits some key items. For example, it seeks to “address the most significant compliance challenges and requests from Congress and drinking water systems related to national primary drinking water regulations for certain PFAS.”
And on the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the plan suggests dropping small business and article importers from the Biden-era reporting rule. EPA’s plan calls for implementing “section 8(a)7 to smartly collect necessary information, as Congress envisioned and consistent with TSCA, without overburdening small businesses and article importers.”
Southerland also notes that EPA intends to continue with Biden-era plans to craft ELGs for chemical manufacturers and metal finishers, but the agency does not mention such technology-based limits for landfills, which the Biden EPA previously said it would propose in 2027.
She also notes that the agency’s plan does not mention pending water quality criteria to protect human health, risk-based measures that states and other regulators can use to set regulatory limits.
Scant Details
The agency’s announcement does not provide details on how officials plan to advance the measures, a point that the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and other groups noted. “We need to learn more about the details of EPA’s announcement,” ACC told Inside PFAS Policy in an email, adding that it welcomes EPA’s adoption of a comprehensive approach to address PFAS.
While EPA may not have provided details in its announcement, in many cases officials may not yet have decided on a course of action.
For example, the agency does not appear to have decided whether to finalize the pending draft risk assessment on PFAS in biosolids. “Finish public comment period for biosolids risk assessment and determine path forward based on comments,” EPA’s announcement says.
And, Jessica Kramer, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead EPA’s water office, told state officials last week that the agency is actively evaluating ways to ease compliance with the PFAS drinking water rule. “We are actively walking down the path of doing an evaluation of what options we have and what relief we can offer in terms of compliance challenges,” she said.
But Southerland says EPA’s plan to provide relief suggests officials want to delay compliance with the rule or weaken the PFAS standards, given the Biden EPA already allowed “an unprecedented five years” for utilities to comply.
“What is the compliance issue that EPA did not already address by giving this unprecedented long period?” she says. “I think it’s because either he’s going to redo the rule to extend much longer the compliance period, so instead of 2029 it would be 2035 . . . or something much longer. Or, more concerning is, he may redo it and change the standard so it is so high [that] very few systems would have to do any treatment at all.”
Similarly, environmentalists fear that EPA’s plan to engage with Congress and industry to craft a Superfund liability framework could open the door to rolling back the Biden EPA’s rule listing two legacy PFAS as “hazardous substances” under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) rule, because Zeldin would need time to collaborate with lawmakers to establish a clear framework.
“Zeldin also repeatedly emphasizes the need to protect ‘passive receivers,’ which is code for wastewater treatment plants that receive toxic PFAS pollution from industries and, in turn, pass the pollution into our drinking water sources,” Jean Zhuang, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Inside PFAS Policy in an email.
Zhuang continued, “Wastewater treatment plants have the authority and obligation to force their industries to control their own toxic waste and are not passive receivers. EPA can make polluters pay for their own pollution by making sure that wastewater treatment plants do just this,” adding that EPA’s announcement provides “cold comfort to communities.”
On the other hand, the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), which represents publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), is pleased with Zeldin’s commitment to lessening the burden on passive receivers of PFAS.
“The actions outlined in today’s announcement mirror the stance NACWA has long been advocating -- polluters should pay the costs of removing PFAS, not public clean water utilities, which are passive receivers of these chemicals,” Nathan Gardner-Andrews, NACWA’s chief advocacy and policy officer, told Inside PFAS Policy in an email. “NACWA looks forward to continued work with EPA in a collaborative manner to address PFAS contamination and ensure clean water for all Americans." -- Pavithra Rajesh (prajesh@iwpnews.com)
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct the date the Biden administration planned to propose revisions to the landfills ELG.
