A federal official told Palmerton Area School District board members Tuesday that “forever chemicals” in the borough’s public drinking water are running at levels up to 12 times the federal safety standard and any action plan to address what students and staff are drinking would be up to district officials.

Josh Barber, an EPA Superfund project manager assigned to the Palmerton Zinc site, was invited by the board to present on the contamination.

He confirmed the EPA has a signed access agreement with the district to test Towamensing Elementary’s private well and offered to test the taps in the district’s other schools if officials asked for it.

Whether the district would install its own filtration system in the interim was left as an open question.

“That would be up to you all to discuss further,” Barber told the board. “I’m happy to consult on that if that’s something you want to pursue.”

PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — have been detected in three of the four production wells the Palmerton Water Authority uses to supply public drinking water, representing 80% of its total production capacity.

The EPA’s maximum contaminant level for two specific types, PFOA and PFOS, is 4 parts per trillion. The highest concentrations ever recorded in the Palmerton wells are 34.5 parts per trillion for PFOA and 49.3 parts per trillion for PFOS — between 10 and 12 times the federal limit.

What’s next

“One part per trillion is one drop in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools,” Barber said.

What makes the situation extraordinary, Barber told the board, is what the EPA is doing about it.

“This is the only site in the country where this is happening,” he said, referring to the agency’s decision to directly install and operate a treatment system for a municipal water supply using its Superfund authority. The legal basis for that authority, he explained, runs through the mountain above Palmerton. When the zinc smelting site was remediated, biosolids — treated sludge from wastewater treatment plants — were spread on the barren mountainside as soil amendments to help vegetation regrow. PFAS compounds have been used widely in industrial and consumer products since the 1940s and accumulate in wastewater treatment sludge.

“EPA believes that some of the materials that were used for the revegetation included these PFAS,” Barber said. “Because there is that connection, that’s why EPA has the authority and the ability under Superfund to do this.”

The treatment system itself will be installed near the water authority’s production wells and housed in shipping containers. It will use granular activated carbon — the same material in household pitcher and refrigerator filters — to bind and remove PFAS as water passes through before entering the distribution system. The equipment will be installed, paid for and maintained by the EPA in coordination with the water authority.

“The goal is to have that installed by late summer,” Barber said.

Until then, residents on public water who want additional protection can use a certified carbon pitcher filter. Boiling water, Barber said, is not a solution.

“The PFAS compounds are called forever chemicals for a reason — they really are hard to destroy,” he said.

The Pennsylvania DEP publishes a list of filters tested for PFAS removal that Barber recommended as a reference. The EPA does not endorse specific brands.

PFAS contamination levels in the Palmerton wells have been relatively stable for the past 18 to 24 months, Barber said. The affected water is distributed only to customers on the public water system; residents on private wells draw from a separate supply. Private well testing is scheduled to begin this month, starting with wells nearest the mountain where the biosolids were applied and expanding outward from there. If PFAS is detected above the federal limit, the EPA will conduct multiple rounds of testing to confirm results before working with the Pennsylvania DEP on point-of-entry treatment for individual wells.

Long-term outlook

The longer-term outlook is more open-ended. PFAS-laden soil on the mountainside will continue feeding contamination into the groundwater indefinitely.

“We know that the mountainside is going to have high levels of PFAS in the soil — it’s going to keep acting as a source,” Barber said. “It’s something that we can’t really get rid of.”

The EPA will spend the next several years drilling additional monitoring wells, mapping the full extent of groundwater contamination and evaluating cleanup options — a process Barber said will resemble the phased, multi-decade approach used in other parts of the Palmerton Zinc Superfund cleanup. The companies responsible for the original zinc operations are not involved in the PFAS response. “EPA is the lead for the PFAS contamination,” Barber said.

PFAS are present in the blood of most Americans regardless of local contamination, Barber noted, because the compounds have been used so extensively in nonstick cookware, water-resistant fabrics, food packaging and firefighting foam. The science on health effects is still developing, and the primary exposure pathway of concern is ingestion through drinking water.

Barber said the EPA’s plan amounts to a two-stage response.

“We’re going to knock out the production wells — we’re going to knock out the PFAS there by the end of this summer,” he said. “And then hopefully in the fall, as we’re getting private well results back in the spring, taking action on any private wells that need treatment.”