” The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Site Remediation and Waste Management Program recently launched a webpage dedicated to “Contaminants of Emerging Concern.”According to NJDEP, the new webpage “focuses on Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)” such as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA); Perfluorononanoic Acid (PFNA); and Perfluorooctanesulfonic Acid (PFOS). NJDEP later announced at a technical conference that hundreds of PFAS are present in the environment; are detrimental to human health and the environment in very low concentrations; and are actively being studied by NJDEP. The import of these comments from NJDEP is that the State is developing standards for many other PFAS.
According to NJDEP, contaminants of emerging concern such as PFAS, ‘if discharged to the waters or onto lands of the State, are pollutants that must be remediated using a Licensed Site Remediation Professional (LSRP)’…
The regulated community may challenge these efforts by NJDEP to establish cleanup standards for PFAS. On December 19, 2017, the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, issued an unpublished opinion in Chemistry Council of New Jersey v. NJDEP, No. A-1439-15T4, that invalidated the Interim Specific Ground Water Quality Criteria (ISGWQC) for PFNA adopted by NJDEP. According to the court: ‘ The record here shows that these interim criteria have become de facto a permanent regulatory scheme without the agency complying with the requirements of the [Administrative Procedures Act] APA. As such, these measures are declared invalid.’ ”
Read the full article by John F. Gullace