Weighing the opportunity cost of treating PFAS in drinking water

Everyone deserves clean water. It’s integral to health and society as we know it. But water is not simply clean or not clean — it’s a sliding scale that depends on many factors. 

PFAS exposure has made headlines, with our country passing limits for PFAS in drinking water in 2024, pushing cities to spend thousands of dollars to remove it from their public drinking water. But PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) is just one issue impacting clean water. There are communities where PFAS in drinking water are a significant and unjust human health issue, but that is not the case for most Americans.

Focusing water quality efforts on PFAS in communities where it’s not the biggest water health risk is like cutting cake from your diet when you really have an ice cream problem. 

Clean water should not make you sick, whether that’s immediately after drinking it or years later. This relates to chemicals that impact long-term health, like PFAS, but it includes acute diseases like cholera and typhoid. In the United States, we take for granted the safety of our drinking water, but diarrheal diseases still kill 1,000 children per day worldwide. 

The Safe Drinking Water Act, which set national, health-based standards for drinking water, has improved water quality since its implementation in the 1970s. This was established to ensure everyone had access to clean drinking water, and at the time most drinking water systems were relatively new, and the infrastructure still operated well. While water quality has improved significantly in response, investment in water infrastructure has lagged in the decades that followed, and raising water rates to upgrade it isn’t a popular political tactic. 

Related: Industry, environmental groups spar over state bans on PFAS in cookware; Minnesota is among those with a law

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that we need to invest $625 billion in the next 20 years just to maintain drinking water systems operating as they are — almost $5,000 for every household in the country. Reliable clean water requires reliable water infrastructure, and tap water passes through numerous tanks, miles of piping, storage towers and reservoirs and pumps before it reaches your home.

Decaying infrastructure leads to higher costs for each person, and exposes us to outbreaks of Legionnaire’s disease and other pathogens, not to mention water shortages and service interruptions. Cities like Bloomington are leading the way by meticulously tracking drinking water infrastructure and scheduling maintenance and replacement to keep everything operational.

In contrast to the limited oversight and funding to maintain drinking water infrastructure, the United States has passed strict laws limiting the amount of PFAS in water, and they are expected to increase water rates. Recent estimates suggest that around 15% of public water systems in the United States will require treatment to comply with current law, costing an estimated $2 billion to $3 billion nationwide every year.

The city of Woodbury recently built a $400 million system to remove PFAS from its source water, which had been contaminated by local 3M activities decades ago, but much of that funding came from 3M through the state. Other cities are struggling to keep up with the added expense without external funding sources. Meanwhile, the EPA estimates that less than 20% of Americans’ PFAS exposure is from drinking water.

We absolutely have the technology to make drinking water as clean as we want it. But funding for drinking water is limited, and any money we as a society spend on PFAS in drinking water is money we can’t spend elsewhere. In places with high levels of PFAS that cause immediate health risks, there should absolutely be treatment. The picture gets more cloudy when PFAS levels are low. 

Are there communities investing in PFAS treatment that could better achieve “cleaner” water by investing in infrastructure? Or by removing contaminants that present higher health risks in that water source? We don’t know the answer for most systems yet, but it’s a question we should be asking. 

Ali Ling is an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of St. Thomas School of Engineering.

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