Pennsylvania Senators Casey and Toomey back PFAS bills in Congress
Kyle Bagenstose reports for the Bucks County Courier-Times
U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and Pat Toomey have thrown their weight behind a package of policies aimed at addressing nationwide contamination of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, their offices said Thursday.
The policies, if ultimately passed, would have significant implications for one of the country’s preeminent environmental issues. The unregulated chemicals have been found in the drinking water of tens of millions of Americans, including at nationally high levels in several Bucks and Montgomery County water supplies. The policies now being pushed by Casey, Toomey and colleagues would require the Environmental Protection Agency to set a federal drinking water standard for two of the most hazardous PFAS substances within two years, require that manufacturers report how much PFAS they release into the environment, and give financial and strategic aid to states and towns, among other measures.
The policies are a sign of crucial bipartisan appetite to act on PFAS in Congress. Earlier this year, the EPA released a “PFAS Action Plan” and administrator Andrew Wheeler announced his “intention” to regulate the chemicals in drinking water and the environment.
But residents of impacted communities and many environmental groups decried the plan as lacking firm commitments and deadlines. It appears those feelings have spilled over into Congress, which held numerous committee hearings on the chemicals this year.
In a prepared statement, Toomey particularly touted parts of the package that would add PFAS to a list of chemicals addressed by the Toxic Release Inventory, an EPA data program that publicly displays what chemicals are being released from industrial sites, as well as language that requires the EPA to develop guidance on how to dispose of PFAS.
“All Pennsylvanians — particularly the residents of Bucks and Montgomery counties — should be fully aware of any risks associated with PFAS in drinking water,” said Toomey, R-Allentown. “The EPA’s Action Plan announced earlier this year is a step in the right direction, but this bipartisan measure will do more to inform impacted communities through increased accountability and transparency.”
Casey also touted the measures.
“Listing PFAS on the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory will help us better understand how PFAS enters our environment and will further our remediation efforts,” Casey, D-Scranton, said in a prepared statement. “I support efforts to get to the root sources of PFAS contamination and chart a path forward to getting PFAS below toxic levels in our environment and ensuring Pennsylvanians have clean water.”
The proposed policies are following the same path that PFAS advocates in Congress used in prior years to make headway on addressing the chemicals. On Thursday, the policies were packaged together and approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, one of two must-pass military spending bills.
There’s still a long road ahead: The amendments must survive deal-making and a final vote in the full Senate and House, and then the process must be repeated again in a separate appropriations bill. But the strategy wound up a winner in years past when Casey, Toomey, and colleagues such as U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle, D-2, of Philadelphia, and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-1, of Middletown, helped push through tens of millions of dollars in funding for PFAS cleanup and a nationwide health study by tagging them on the appropriations bills.
