Page 10 - Yucaipa Valley Water District - Board Workshop

INSIGHT: PFAS Liability Is Coming to California about:reader?url=https://www.bna.com/insight-pfas-liability-n57982093402/

real guidance, the OEHHA declared it “remains the responsibility”

of regulated parties “to determine if a warning is necessary or a

discharge is prohibited.”

In the meantime, the OEHHA recommended “interim notification

levels” for PFOA and PFOS for use by the State Water Resources

Control Board in regulating public water supplies in California that

are almost as low as detection limits. Upon the OEHHA’s

recommendation—and similar to the regulators in New Jersey—the

board adopted notification levels for PFOA of 14 parts per trillion

and for PFOS of 13 parts per trillion. These notification levels

provide drinking water guidelines for local agencies to follow in

detecting and reporting PFOA and PFOS in public water supplies.

Granted, the guidelines adopted by the board are technically

distinct from Proposition 65 and only require local water agencies to

report PFOA or PFOS to their boards when those contaminants are

detected at or above prescribed notification levels. Yet, these

exceptionally low thresholds were specifically recommended by the

OEHHA, and it is unlikely the agency would accept anything higher

than that threshold under Proposition 65.

Even worse, federal, state, and local regulators have already

undertaken significant testing of public water supplies in California

for PFAS-related compounds, which could be used to support

aggressive Proposition 65 claims the moment the warning

requirement goes into effect in November.

According to a recent statewide analysis of drinking water sources

pursuant to the federal “Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule,”

at least 36 sources have PFOS detections, and 32 sources have

PFOA detections. In other words, data already exist that show

California drinking water supplies have been exposed to chemicals

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