The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month released its long-awaited PFAS water pollution standards, and Wellesley officials are feeling pretty good about where the town stands on compliance even though the regs won’t go into effect for a few years.

The Wellesley Board of Public Works pulled together a quick meeting with the Health Department on April 12, two days after the EPA regs were announced, to discuss the town’s status related to the new regs and to hash out town messaging on the subject (see Wellesley Media recording). The town has updated its PFAS information page online.

Wellesley—with Town Meeting’s support—has invested serious time and resources into filtering out PFAS (aka, forever chemicals, or more technically, per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in recent years to adhere to tough state standards published in 2020 for what’s known as the PFAS-6 compunds, and is now well prepared to meet federal standards even though they don’t completely overlap with the state ones. Wellesley has investigated possible sources of PFAS in its water, but hasn’t come to any real conclusions other than that the stuff is pretty much everywhere (and surfaces not just in drinking water).

The town in 2022 put PFAS filtering technology in place at its Morses Pond treatment plant, which Wellesley had to pull offline when the state regulations first went into effect.

PFAS filters at Morses Pond DPW — PFAS filters at Morses Pond treatment plant

That investment, funded by the town and through federal monies, has proven effective in that PFAS has been reduced to non-detect levels (though PFAS treatment and water sourcing have increased water bills, significantly back in 2022 before settling back down to about 4% rate increases since). Exposure to elevated levels of PFAS have been linked to cancer, heart problems, and immune system issues.

Wellesley’s entire current supply of drinking water, both from town wells and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), complies with the state and federal regulations. The town is pulling about 500,000 gallons a day from the Morses Pond treatment plant, and seeks to boost that to closer to 750,000. It’s relying on the MWRA water for about two-thirds of its needs.

“What’s coming out of the Morses Pond treatment plant complies with these new standards, and to me, that’s the most important takeaway. The water we’re pumping out right now is a combination of MWRA water and Morses Pond water, and that water complies,” DPW Director David Cohen said during the April 12 meeting.

The town’s Rosemary Brook/Longfellow Pond and Wellesley Ave plants have complied with the state rules, but wouldn’t likely meet the federal standards; both plants are actually offline for now for maintenance and construction reasons. Wellesley would like to get them both back online at some point, as the town strives to balance its sources of water so as not to become over-reliant on any of them, including the MWRA. The town has also been in discussions with the MWRA to build a redundant connection to that water source some day, but that’s still years away if it happens.

While you might not want to get into all the acronyms, the EPA standards address compounds dubbed PFOA, PFO,PFNA, PFHxS, and HFPO-DA Gen-X Chemicals, as well as mixtures of them. Four of the six chemicals identified by the EPA are on the state list, though the mixture of chemicals is not part of the state rules, and the state rules include two chemicals not on the EPA list. The EPA has set limits for 4 or 10 parts per trillion of these chemicals being the maximum allowable amounts in drinking water.

Public water suppliers have three years to complete initial monitoring of their water, and Wellesley has already done this. The EPA is giving five years to meet the chemical limits—five years out public water suppliers will need to issue notifications if they fail to adhere to the standards. The DPW’s Cohen said the town will need to get further guidance from the state and feds on certain aspects of the new rules, and any possible updates to state ones.

“We have a plan, this is not a surprise to us,” Cohen said. “We’ve been actively dealing with it, we actually have dollars in our capital budget to provide additional treatment at our other water treatment plants, and by the way, we also have dollars programmed to help us build a second connection to the MWRA so that we can decide what future we want when that becomes a real option for us. We just need more time to get that treatment online, and this just adds a little complexity to the way we describe it.”

Cohen continued that “I don’t love the message coming from the EPA, the idea that there’s a new standard that we’re supposed to be taking seriously and we do. But you have five years to comply, that’s a hard message to get out there. What I would say is we’re not waiting 5 years for anything… We already have a plan to address this in place.”

For specific PFAS information and questions, contact Water & Sewer Superintendent Steve Olson at 781-235-7600 or email dpw@wellesleyma.gov

For health-related questions, contact the Wellesley Health Department at 781-235-0135. Public Health Director Lenny Izzo said during the April 12 meeting that the town will aim to provide more education about possible sources of PFAS beyond the drinking water.