Trump's EPA weakens PFAS drinking water limits. What it means for Michigan

• The EPA on Wednesday announced plans to roll back regulations on PFAS in drinking water
• Four compounds will no longer be regulated, while water providers will have two extra years to limit the presence of two other compounds
• The move drew jeers from public health advocates and cheers from water providers who feared high costs of compliance

The Trump administration has announced plans to rescind drinking-water limits on four PFAS “forever chemical” compounds while extending the compliance deadline for two others, in a move that outraged victims of Michigan’s widespread PFAS contamination.

Nationwide regulations limiting allowable levels of PFOA and PFOS — two of the most common among thousands of PFAS compounds — now won’t take effect until 2031, which is two years later than previously scheduled. There will no longer be a federal limit on PFHxS, PFNA, GenX or PFBS, four other compounds that the Biden administration had moved to regulate last year.

Michigan’s state-level drinking water standards will continue to limit the compounds that the federal government no longer wants to regulate. However, several of those state-level standards are weaker than the federal ones the EPA is rescinding.

Biden’s EPA created the nation’s first enforceable drinking water limits on PFAS in 2024, responding to mounting evidence that has linked various PFAS compounds to cancer and other health risks. Water systems were given until 2029 to comply.

In a statement Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin called that deadline too aggressive and said the Trump administration’s planned extension would offer “common-sense flexibility" while drinking water providers take measures to stay beneath the limits.

“This will support water systems across the country, including small systems in rural communities, as they work to address these contaminants,” he added.

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The announcement drew cheers from national groups representing water utilities, which have raised concerns about high costs to install PFAS filtration systems, and outrage from PFAS activists who called the rollbacks a victory for chemical companies at the expense of Americans’ health. 

“These actions will undoubtedly make the drinking water of millions of people across the country less safe,” said Tony Spaniola, co-chair of the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network. 

If the EPA follows through on its plans, he said, lawsuits are likely to follow.

“We haven't heard the last of this by any stretch of the imagination,” he said, “but man, I would much rather be in the position we were in a year ago, when these things were moving forward and we had a Justice Department and an EPA that was going to vigorously defend them.”

Known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment, PFAS  — short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — have been heavily used by industry and present in common household products for decades. While some PFAS manufacturers knew long ago that their products were toxic, the chemicals went largely unregulated until recently, when a widening contamination crisis began to make headlines in Michigan and around the globe.

The most heavily polluted sites are associated with the military and industry, including paper mills, metal plating operations, textile manufacturers and airports. All have a significant presence in Michigan, which is home to 347 known or suspected sites of PFAS contamination.

If the EPA follows through with its planned rollbacks, Michigan’s drinking water will remain better protected against PFAS than the water in most other states, because state officials took the unusual step in 2020 of enacting their own drinking water standards for seven compounds.  

However, some of those state-level limits are weaker than the limits enacted by Biden’s EPA, and their future hangs in the balance after chemical company 3-M sued the state in hopes of voiding them.

‘Years of progress’

In Oscoda, where PFAS used on a now-defunct Air Force base has caused widespread groundwater and surface water contamination, one of the main sources of pollution would now be left unregulated at the federal level. Michigan’s limit for that compound, known as PFHxS, is far less stringent.

Spaniola, who owns a cabin in Oscoda, said the plan to lift limits on several PFAS chemicals “undoes years of progress” to protect the health of residents in Oscoda and other communities.

Leaders of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators and the National Rural Water Association, which represent drinking water providers, lauded Wednesday’s announcement of a deadline extension. 

Several groups representing drinking water providers had sued the federal government over the Biden-era PFAS standards, arguing that the cost of filtering PFAS out of drinking water will be too high. It’s not clear whether those lawsuits will continue in light of Wednesday’s announcement. 

Representatives of Michigan’s drinking water sector had a more muted reaction. 

“I”m neither jumping for nor totally cheering against it,” said Rick Solle, board director of the Michigan section of the American Water Works Association. 

Solle, who oversees public services in Plainfield Township, is no stranger to the high costs of PFAS contamination — both in terms of dollars and residents’ health. It cost $5 million for his water system to install a carbon filtration system that strips away PFAS contamination caused by the shoe company Wolverine Worldwide. 

Wolverine agreed to cover those costs in a legal settlement, but Solle noted that many other communities will be forced to pay for PFAS filtration on their own, meaning water rates could rise.

The PFAS changes are part of a broader deregulatory push by the Trump EPA, an agency created to rein in industry pollution that Trump has staffed with industry-friendly appointees including former lobbyists for the chemical and oil industries. 

The agency’s new leadership has vowed to make the EPA a business-friendlier agency, and has followed up by firing staff en masse and planning rollbacks of a wide variety of anti-pollution regulations, from limits on vehicle emissions to wastewater controls for coal-fired power plants.