Tap water testing conducted in 18 states by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found New Martinsville had the second-highest level of PFAS in the country at 40 parts per trillion.
Tap water testing conducted in 18 states by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found New Martinsville had the second-highest level of PFAS in the country at 40 parts per trillion.
Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are manmade chemicals used in an array of industrial processes and consumer products, but linger in the environment and pose a risk to human health.
Of the 36 locations tested by the nonprofit research and advocacy organization, only Monroe, New Jersey had higher levels at 80 parts per trillion.
The EPA has proposed a new limit for some PFAS of four parts per trillion.
Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist for EWG, said the EPA’s proposed regulation is significant and overdue, but more can be done for public health.
“The health based limit that we want to be working towards, that is different from the enforceable legal MCL (maximum contaminant limit), the four parts per trillion,” she said. “Actually the goal would be zero because there’s no actual safe limit of these chemicals in your drinking water. The goal is zero, they are linked to cancer.”
Stoiber said consumers can take proactive steps, such as filtering their water at the tap before drinking, but more will need to be done to address the larger issue.
“The mental burden of having to figure out what filter to buy, the economic burden, this shouldn’t be placed on individuals or the community,” she said. “Recognizing that it should be the polluters that were originally responsible for this and that have profited so much over the last few decades, it should be the polluters that pay to fix this.”
The EPA is in the process of collecting samples to understand the frequency the chemicals are found in the nation’s drinking water systems and at what levels. The data collection is slated to take place through 2025, and Stoiber said it could be some time before the data is publicly available.
“That’s why we continue to do these smaller testing projects, just to get more results out there and to show that this contaminant contamination is quite widespread,” she said.
Gov. Jim Justice’s office has directed the DHHR and DEP to collaborate with water systems in West Virginia in preparation of the revised EPA guidelines.
On this West Virginia Morning, WVU professor and researcher Emily Garner looks into micro-organisms in water systems, and a children’s book on urban farming and getting kids excited about growing their own food.
On this West Virginia Morning, most of us turn on the water faucet and clean water comes out. But you may not realize the water pipes that deliver the water to you have micro slime inside them.
WVU professor and researcher Emily Garner has a grant from the National Science Foundation to look into micro-organisms in water systems. She spoke with News Director Eric Douglas to explain what she is finding.
And, from The Allegheny Front in Pittsburgh, their latest story about a children’s book on urban farming and getting kids excited about growing their own food.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Concord University and Shepherd University.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Known as “Big Cove,” The Nature Conservancy West Virginia State Director Thomas Minney said the land will improve the region’s recreation by opening up new land to the public, but also by protecting its natural beauty.
International conservation organization The Nature Conservancy has acquired close to 2,000 acres bordering the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge for protection.
Known as “Big Cove,” The Nature Conservancy West Virginia State Director Thomas Minney said the land will improve the region’s recreation by opening up new land to the public, but also by protecting its natural beauty.
“While The Nature Conservancy holds it, it’s going to be open to passive recreation. Hiking, hunting, those sorts of traditional uses that have been on the property are going to still be there and available to the public,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that’s going on in the Davis to Thomas area to look at how you create a recreational friendly and highly important place that people enjoy visiting. We hope that this comes in tandem with conserving really, really important biodiversity areas as a huge complement to those other plans.”
The Nature Conservancy is exploring how to work with the local stakeholders to improve trail access areas.
“Connecting areas such as going from A Frame Road, down Brown Mountain and into the northern ends of the current wildlife refuge,” Minney said. “We continue to think and invest.”
Big Cove sits in the northern end and is the crown of Canaan Valley, a biodiversity rich and climate resilient landscape. It expands habitat from the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge that features many rare species that occupy the forest, stream and wetland habitats in this area.
“What makes Canaan Valley and the highlands of West Virginia really interesting is what elevation does for us. When you’re looking from 3,000, to over 4,000 feet, it is creating an environment that’s more like Canada,” Minney said. “In the valley itself, something that’s really interesting is the circumneutral wetland, which means it’s on limestone. And where you have an occurrence of wetland on limestone like that it has a lot of rare plants that are associated with it. It’s one of the most vital areas for biodiversity here in the Appalachians.”
Minney said that as local climates continue to change, the Canaan Valley’s unique elevation and moisture forms a “landscape highway” where migration of unique species can occur and ensure the Appalachians remain connected north to south.
He also said the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge and the newly acquired Big Cove are central to the region’s drinking water supply.
The U.S. Forest Service’s Forests to Faucets analysis identifies the landscape as in the second highest of 10 categories for national surface drinking water importance.
With toxic “forever chemicals” being detected in waterways statewide, the pollutants have caught the attention of both the public eye and state legislators.
With toxic “forever chemicals” being detected in waterways statewide, the pollutants have caught the attention of both the public eye and state legislators.
PFAS are a group of around 10,000 manmade chemicals that have been used to manufacture both industrial and consumer products for around 80 years. More commonly known as “forever chemicals,” they’re known to cause health problems like liver damage, higher cholesterol, cancer and a weakened immune system, among others.
Most famously, PFAS chemicals have been used to create industrial-grade firefighting foam and have been used by companies like Chemours and Dupont to create Teflon. But they’re also found in products like food packaging and water-resistant jackets.
“These products end up in landfills, many of them can have leachate that gets into the groundwater and percolates through the soil,” Jenna Dodson, staff scientist at the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, said.
Dodson was among the panelists at a public conference addressing PFAS earlier this month in Shepherdstown, located in the Eastern Panhandle.
Levels of PFAS chemicals above the federal EPA’s health advisories have been found in 130 raw water supplies statewide, with the state’s Departments of Environmental Protection and Health and Human Resources currently testing the state’s treated water systems as well.
In 2019, the CDC reported that state residents living near the Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base in Martinsburg had blood concentrations of PFAS higher than the national average. Bases like that use the PFAS firefighting foam, and it is believed the chemicals contaminated much of the local waterways. Martinsburg’s Big Springs water filtration plant was temporarily shut down in 2016 after high levels of the chemicals were found.
“They’re in our waterways, it’s in our soil, it’s in our air because it also travels via air deposition,” Dodson said. “And so that’s why they’re so ubiquitous and again, localized contamination can occur.”
In the region alone, there are 36 raw water supplies that have been identified as having unsafe amounts of the chemicals. That area, along with the Ohio River Valley, is considered a “PFAS hot zone” in West Virginia, though they’ve been found in water supplies statewide.
A map depicting the locations of raw water systems statewide where PFAS were detected at higher levels than current federal health advisories. (West Virginia Rivers Coalition)
Dodson was joined by Brent Walls of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network. He’s studying PFAS’ effects on the Potomac River’s aquatic ecosystem by surveying small-range fish species in the area. He discovered some fish in the nearby Antietam Creek in Maryland had elevated amounts of the chemicals in their tissue.
“That was extremely alarming because smallmouth bass is a popular recreational fish species, not only for catch and release, but also for families and communities to take home to eat,” Walls said.
Health advisory guidelines released by the EPA in 2022 say anything above 0.004 parts per trillion for PFOA or 0.02 parts per trillion for PFOS are considered unsafe. PFOA and PFOS are two common PFAS subgroups.
“That would be one drop of PFOS in 20 Olympic sized pools,” Walls said. “That’s the kind of visualization of how small the amount of this pollutant has an impact.”
Walls is worried state and local agencies wouldn’t be able to properly measure and treat PFAS because of how little amounts are needed to infiltrate waterways to contaminate them.
“Those tests are expensive,” Walls said. “And even if the facilities are able to find the lab to provide the analysis for their influent or effluent (river systems), or even for the drinking water that goes out to the public, then they have to find the resources to address the situation, to implement some level of protection, some kind of a water treatment to remove the PFAS down to those levels. And that’s going to cost some money.”
That’s a concern echoed by John Bresland, one of the local citizens in attendance at the Shepherdstown conference Walls and Dodson spoke at. He’s also a member of the town’s water board.
EPA Senior Advisor Rod Snyder speaks at a community panel at Shepherd University’s Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional Education and History as fellow panelists Jenna Dodson and Brent Walls look on. (Shepherd Snyder/WV Public Broadcasting)
“I know that the current wastewater plant that we have will not be able to remove PFAS,” Bresland said. “So we need to get some guidance from the EPA if, and when, the time comes.”
The EPA is set to propose a national drinking water standard regulating PFOA and PFOS by the end of this year. That could come as early as this Spring, according to EPA senior advisor Rod Snyder, who also spoke at the conference.
Other locals in attendance, like David Lillard, were concerned about both his health as well as the health of the local environment.
“We’re a headwater state,” Lillard said. “So water that flows from our mountains is not only our drinking water, it is a drinking water for people in the Ohio Valley. And in the Potomac River Basin. It’s 5 million people just in the Washington, DC area.”
In the state legislature, bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate that would require the state Department of Environmental Protection to create an action plan to address PFAS chemicals, have state manufacturing facilities monitor and self-report PFAS discharge and would enforce a limit on said discharges statewide.
Senate Bill 485 passed through the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resource Committee and is currently in the Finance Committee. The House of Delegates’ equivalent bill, HB 3189, passed the House as of Friday. It’s now on its way to the Senate.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is seeking public comment on its draft water monitoring and assessment report.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is seeking public comment on its draft water monitoring and assessment report.
The report includes a list of impaired stream and lake assessments. An impaired water is a body that fails to meet state quality standards and can’t support at least one designated use, the agency said.
The department said the report fulfills requirements of the federal Clean Water Act to provide a list of impaired waters and an overall assessment of West Virginia lakes, wetlands and streams to the federal government.
Public comment may be submitted by 5 p.m. June 1 by email to DEPWAB@wv.gov or regular mail to Attn: Mindy S. Neil, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Water and Waste Management, 601 57th Street, S.E., Charleston, WV 25304.
Several communities in West Virginia's southern coalfields celebrated the completion of a long awaited project to bring clean water to local communities last week.
Several communities in West Virginia’s southern coalfields celebrated the completion of a long awaited project to bring clean water to local communities last week.
The Elkhorn Water Project began in 2015 and included a new 400,000 gallon water storage tank on Elkhorn Mountain. The recently completed phase two brings county water to 112 McDowell County Service District customers in Upland, Kyle and Powhatan; 163 customers in Northfork and Algoma; and 101 in Keystone, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported.
Many water systems in the area were installed in the early 1900s by coal companies and have been failing for years. Residents of Keystone, for example, were under a boil water notice for more than a decade.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., met with local and state officials on Thursdayto celebrate the completion phase two. Capito said clean drinking water is among the basic infrastructure rights, which includes good roads and broadband access.
