“New Englanders had a chance to speak out this week about what they want to see in new Environmental Protection Agency rules for industrial chemicals in drinking water – but residents say the proof that they were heard will be in what the regulators do next.

The EPA’s two-day meeting in Exeter was the agency’s first regional public input session on its plans for a broad class of chemicals known as PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances…

But the PFAS category encompasses thousands of man-made chemicals in all – most of them unregulated, many found in high levels in drinking water around former military installations, fire stations, landfills and factories…

Nearly 200 residents and public officials from all six New England states were at the EPA meeting June 24-25 – but the predominant testimony came from neighbors of Pease International Tradeport in Portsmouth and the Saint Gobain plastics factory in Merrimack.

Pease was one of the first major PFAS investigation sites in New England. Chemicals were found at high levels in the public water system in 2014.

Andrea Amico co-founded Testing for Pease and made several presentations at the forum. Her kids ingested PFAS while in daycare at Pease, which she says brings her guilt every day.

‘This situation has really robbed me of some of my happiness as a mother, as a person, and that’s something I can never get back,’ she says.

Amico and others called for stricter limits on PFAS as soon as possible – they suggested 1 part per trillion, compared to the EPA’s current non-binding limit of 70 parts per trillion, which New Hampshire has adopted…

Communities that worry about their wells still want action from state and federal regulators.

Several Merrimack residents testified about cancers and other conditions they suspect are linked to PFAS from Saint Gobain. They called for New Hampshire to lower its PFAS limit, do more blood tests to get data from citizens, and provide more bottled water.

And residents near the Seacoast’s Coakley Landfill Superfund site also asked the state to be proactive. High levels of PFAS have been found around the landfill, and are already present in some neighbors’ wells at levels the CDC has deemed potentially risky…

The other big message to EPA was about money.

Residents want the agency to do more to make polluters – including private industry and the Department of Defense – fund response, including health and environmental monitoring, water filters and treatment at PFAS hotspots.

Sue Phelan lives on Cape Cod, where the county firefighting academy left PFAS in the peninsula’s sole-source aquifer. Like many similar sites, it’s now the subject of a class-action lawsuit…

State officials said they want uniform standards and more guidance and resources most of all. Vermont’s deputy natural resources secretary Peter Walke said they’ll need as much help as they can get as more states discover PFAS in their communities…

He said they heard clearly that residents want more proactive management, and for EPA ‘to engage the industry more to work towards replacement of these compounds, and to flip the script on this ‘safe until proven toxic’ standard of planning that a lot of members of the community expressed concern with.’

He said they also understood that residents want more comprehensive and uniform data, standards and communication on the issue.

Public officials at the meeting also seized on a line used by one local activist: ‘nothing about us without us.’ They encouraged EPA and each other to give citizens a seat at the table in PFAS response and regulation.”

Read the full article by Annie Ropeik