Justine McDaniel reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer
A potentially toxic chemical that has run off former military bases and manufacturing sites to contaminate drinking water in parts of suburban Philadelphia and South Jersey has shown up in a Camden County borough’s water supply.
Bellmawr Borough ordered one of its two water treatment facilities shut down Thursday, three weeks after the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection notified the borough of the contamination. It marked one of the first times New Jersey’s newly established drinking-water standard for a chemical known as PFNA set off alarm bells for a municipal water authority.
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The testing measured PFNA at an average level higher than the state’s limit by about 6 parts per trillion, the borough said in a letter to residents. The borough has a population of about 11,500.
At that low level, the water was still safe to drink, the DEP told Bellmawr, the borough said in a statement. The contamination does not pose a health emergency for residents.
Local officials must bring the water system into compliance with the state standard within a year, but “in an absolute abundance of caution,” the borough decided to immediately shut down the contaminated water supply.
The chemical is a type of PFAS, a large family of substances that have been linked to cancer and other health problems and have been found in the drinking water of millions of Americans. It cannot be boiled out of water and requires costly treatment systems to remove.
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Elsewhere in New Jersey, officials have pointed to former Solvay, DuPont, and 3M manufacturing sites as the culprits of PFAS contamination in areas including Gloucester, Passaic, Middlesex, and Salem Counties. In Pennsylvania, the chemicals poured off military bases in Bucks and Montgomery Counties.
This year, New Jersey became the first state in the country to set a drinking-water standard for one of the PFAS chemicals with its 13-part-per-trillion limit on PFNA. New Jersey plans to regulate two other types; Pennsylvania and a handful of other states are working on their own standards.
Related news stories:
NJDEP calls EPA: Hey, let’s start cleaning up these PFAS sites. EPA: Bad connection. Bye.
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