It's Time For A New Water Treatment Era
Study Says Most Utilities Lack Advanced Filtration Systems That Could Protect Public Health From PFAS, and other harmful contaminants like DBPs, Heavy Metals & More
Let me start by saying that chlorination has served us very well. It’s cheap. It’s potent. But it’s not enough.
For more than 100 years, public water systems have added chlorine to water as the primary disinfectant—and for good reason. It’s highly effective at killing most potentially harmful organisms such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites. It’s done a good job of preventing disease. Before chlorination, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and diarrhea outbreaks were common in cities across the world.
Treating the water with chlorine helped reduce these health problems, but the world has changed. Now, our issues go beyond biological (or microbial) contaminants.
A new study from scientists at the Environmental Working Group shows that advanced water treatment technologies such as granular activated carbon, ion exchange, and reverse osmosis, which can remove PFAS, can also lower levels of multiple problematic substances found in our drinking water.
These more advanced water filtration systems can also help reduce levels of cancer-causing disinfection byproducts, or DBPs, agricultural nitrates and heavy metals like arsenic and uranium.
“Installation of advanced filtration technologies for removing PFAS substances from drinking water presents an opportunity for considerable improvement in public drinking water quality,” the study authors wrote.
Well, that’s great because drinking water systems are still on deadline to develop plans for addressing PFOA and PFOS in their water supply, though the current EPA pushed the deadline back to 2031.
More than 5,000 community water systems, serving an estimated 76 million people in the United States, had PFAS contamination levels that may exceed the maximum contaminant levels (MCLs), necessitating the installation of PFAS-removing treatment technologies, according to a 2024 EPA analysis.
The problem? Most of them don’t have the money.
The study notes that “larger systems, which have a greater customer base as well as greater financial and institutional resources, are more likely to have advanced treatment.”
PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals” are the contaminants of concern right now. They are extremely toxic even at low levels. Both PFOA and PFOS (just two of a class of thousands of chemicals) are byproducts of industry. These man-made chemicals, found in everything from firefighting foams and stain-resistant sprays to nonstick cookware and water-resistant fabrics, have no business in our water supply.
But that’s been the way for years as factories and manufacturers have used freshwater sources as convenient places to dump their waste. Add on top of that waste from agriculture, wastewater treatment plants, and stormwater runoff.
That’s why we need to ramp up our water treatment systems.
The challenge isn't technical—it’s economic and logistical. Most of the nearly 150,000 public water systems in the U.S. use conventional treatment processes: coagulation, flocculation, clarification, and basic filtration through sand or similar materials. These traditional methods have little to no impact on PFAS concentrations.
Different utilities use different treatment steps depending on the quality of the source water entering the treatment plant. Water from lakes, rivers, or reservoirs (known as surface water) usually require more treatment than water from under the ground (also called groundwater). It makes sense since surface water tends to have more sediment, along with toxic chemicals.
Only 7 percent of very small water systems, defined as those serving fewer than 500 people, use advanced filtration. As a result, millions of Americans in rural and under-resourced communities remain exposed to PFAS, hazardous disinfection byproducts, and heavy metals.
“The majority of systems impacted by PFAS contamination lack advanced water treatment,” the study authors wrote. “A nationwide installation of treatment for PFAS removal could present an opportunity for overall public water quality improvement.”
The research underscores an urgent need to rethink U.S. water policy. Right now, we focus regulations on one chemical at a time. What we need is a more holistic strategy that protects us from the full spectrum of pollutants. That work should begin in the communities that need it most.
“This study exposes a dangerous blind spot in federal water policy,” said Melanie Benesh, EWG vice president of government affairs said in a statement. “Communities wouldn’t just filter out PFAS, they’d be eliminating multiple toxic chemicals at the same time. By ignoring these co-benefits, the EPA is leaving Americans exposed and missing a huge economic and public health opportunity.”
And regulations are only half the battle. We also must consider national water monitoring. Inconsistent reporting to the EPA’s monitoring program hinders tracking co-occurring contaminants and evaluating treatment effectiveness. Standardized, nationwide monitoring and treatment-focused regulations would better reflect real-world water contamination patterns.
The financial barrier is significant but not insurmountable, as two communities demonstrate.
Change is Possible: NC
Let’s talk about how a North Carolina utility made state-of-the-art upgrades to its system in a community that was plagued with PFAS problems.
When PFAS were discovered in the Cape Fear River, it shook residents living in and near Wilmington and raised awareness of water quality issues.
It all began in 2017 when the Wilmington StarNews broke a story about the rampant contamination of the region’s drinking water supply by a chemical called GenX, a new generation of chemical designed to be a safer alternative to PFOA.
At the time my inbox became flooded with concerns from people living there. Little was known about GenX then, but North Carolina governor Roy Cooper did take action (thanks to a vocal community) to block the company from continuing to dispose of this chemical in the water supply.
The PFAS can be traced back to a plant that DuPont, and its spin-off, Chemours, dumped into the river for decades.
So, the water utilities had to step up.
Eight new granular activated carbon filters were added to the Sweeney Water Treatment Plant, which draws water from the Cape Fear River and provides about 80 percent of the drinking water distributed from the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority (CFPUA).
Construction began in November 2019, and CFPUA began treating 100 percent of the water at Sweeney with the new GAC filters in late September 2022. By September 29, 2022, sampling detected no PFAS in water treated by the new filters.
Total project costs, including engineering and construction, were $43 million. Those costs were financed through the sale of revenue bonds. Paying off the bonds will result in an increase of about $5 on an average customer’s monthly bill. The annual operating costs (upkeep) for the new filters about $5 million a year.
Why aren’t the companies responsible for the PFAS paying to address this problem?
CFPUA says on its website that it’s been asking that question since 2017, when Chemours representatives told the community that operations at its Fayetteville Works plant had been discharging PFAS compounds into the Cape Fear River. Those discharges also occurred under DuPont, which created Chemours, and dated to about 1980.
CFPUA believes Chemours and DuPont should take financial responsibility for the results of their decades of PFAS releases. CFPUA has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to force them to pay. That lawsuit is pending.
Change is Possible: FL
In Stuart, Florida, Mike Woodside, the water treatment superintendent, faced a similar challenge in 2016 when state regulators notified the city that PFAS levels in the drinking water exceeded safe limits. The contamination source: firefighting foam used by the city's own fire department.
The city acted quickly, replacing some contaminated wells and spending $600,000 for a system to remove the chemicals, but the city also wanted to look forward, and began plans for a $20 million reverse osmosis plant.
The new system takes water from a well in the Floridan aquifer, which is less susceptible to contamination. The water from the Floridan aquifer will be added to water from the existing system to create better-quality water, according to the city.
The city became a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit joined by thousands of municipalities throughout the country, which settled with chemical giant 3M over claims of water contamination in the city's groundwater.
Money from the settlement is expected to reimburse the investments for operational and cleanup expenses.
The reverse osmosis plant is the city's largest capital-improvement project ever.
Legal action takes time, and these utilities did the right thing by their customers in upgrading their water treatment systems.
Other utilities have no clear source to blame for PFAS contamination and may have to foot the bill by raising costs for customers or hoping for more assistance from state and federal funding.
The Path Forward
Transforming our water infrastructure requires coordinated action at multiple levels:
Federal and State Investment: Under-resourced water systems need dedicated funding streams for advanced filtration technologies. The communities most affected by contamination often have the least capacity to pay for solutions.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Standardized, nationwide monitoring programs should track multiple contaminants simultaneously, providing data needed for evidence-based policy decisions and treatment optimization.
Smarter Regulations: Federal standards should account for co-occurring contaminants and the cumulative benefits of advanced treatment technologies, moving beyond the current chemical-by-chemical approach.
Corporate Accountability: Companies responsible for water contamination must bear the financial responsibility for cleanup, not ratepayers who had no role in creating the problem.
The technology exists to provide safe, clean drinking water. Communities in North Carolina and Florida have proven it can be done. What’s needed now is the political will to make access to advanced water treatment a national priority.
Imagine a country where everyone felt safe drinking their tap water. Now that’s a vision I hold close to my heart.
What’s your take on advanced water treatment technologies? Keep the conversation going below.