The South Adams County Water and Sanitation District plans to build a new filtration system to catch “forever chemicals” that may be undetectable, even as the district noted that the Environmental Protection Agency has “moved the goalposts.”    

The district said it hired a leading environmental and construction services firm, Brown and Caldwell, to design a new 18 million gallons per day ion exchange process to remove PFAS at its Klein Water Treatment Facility.

The new filtration system is scheduled to go online by the end of 2026, the district said in a news release.

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“Ever since the district first began voluntarily testing for PFAS, we have been monitoring for these compounds and working to reduce their impact on our customers,” District Manager Abel Moreno said in a news release release. “The EPA has moved the goalposts, and we are taking steps to reduce the presence of PFAS even further.” 

In 2018, the district discovered low levels of so-called the chemicals known as PFAS in some of its drinking water wells. The district stopped drawing water from the affected wells and began purchasing water from Denver Water, blending the latter into its supply to reduce PFAS levels, along with optimizing the use of its treatment system.

At the time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Health Advisory Levels for certain of these chemicals sat at 70 parts per trillion, below which adverse health effects, the agency said, are not expected to occur. 

The district told its 67,000 customers in Commerce City and unincorporated Adams County that their water was safe to drink and that PFAS levels did not exceed any state or federal water quality standards.

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In June, the EPA lowered the advisory levels for the two most common chemicals found in water supplies, PFOA and PFOS, down to 0.004 ppt for PFOA and 0.02 ppt for PFOS. The EPA acknowledged that these levels are set so low that it is not scientifically possible to detect the chemicals.

As a result of the EPA’s revised HAL standard, the district board began deliberating in June on whether to continue to use treated water from Denver Water to dilute the PFAS or build a treatment facility to remove the chemicals.

In its news release, the district noted that, while it maintains test levels below 70 parts per trillion, the new advisories are “set so low that it is not yet possible to detect the presence of the compounds at these levels scientifically.”

At a July 13 board meeting, water systems manager Kipp Scott said PFAS levels had been at undetectable levels since June 15, and that he believes levels would remain undetectable through the balance of 2022, according to the minutes of the meeting. Scott also said the cost of buying water from Denver Water in 2022 is $2.75 million, and that the district could spend another $3.6 million buying water in 2023.

On Nov. 2, the EPA published its Contaminant Candidates List that it will consider for regulation over the next five-year regulatory cycle under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“As EPA takes action to protect public health and the environment from PFAS, including proposing the first nationwide drinking water standards later this year, today’s final CCL 5 looks further forward to consider additional protective steps for these forever chemicals,” EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox said in a news release.  

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Both the EPA and the Colorado Department of Health and Environment have said publicly that, while PFAS are a concern, no crisis exists and people need not stop drinking tap water.

Research involving humans suggests that high levels of certain PFAS may lead to increased cholesterol levels, decreased vaccine response in children, changes in liver enzymes, increased risk of high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia in pregnant women, small decreases in infant birth weights, and increased risk of kidney or testicular cancer, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. 

“At this time, scientists are still learning about the health effects of exposures to mixtures of different PFAS,” said a September ATSDR report on PFAS contamination near former military bases, including Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs.