Hello and welcome everyone. My name is Dane Menke. I am the digital marketing manager here at Regenesis and Land Science.

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Today’s webinar will focus on navigating PFAS regulations.

With that, I’d like to introduce our presenters for today. We are pleased to have with us Ned Witte, Partner at Earth and Water Law. Ned Witte is a nationally recognized environmental attorney with extensive experience advising clients on PFAS-related matters across the U.S., including sites impacted by AFFF use, manufacturing, and disposal.

He has represented clients in Wisconsin and several other states and was selected in 2020 by the Biden and Harris EPA agency review team to consult on PFAS issues. He serves on the Wisconsin DNR PFAS Policy Advisory Group and previously co-chaired the Citizens and Public Interest Committee for the Wisconsin PFAS Action Council.

He frequently presents on PFAS at national and legal forums and contributes to ASTM efforts on PFAS due diligence in real estate.

We are also pleased to have with us today Ryan Moore, PFAS remediation program director at Regenesis. Ryan Moore has 20 years of experience as an environmental project manager and laboratory Account Executive relating to multimedia contamination sites throughout the US. His experience has focused on in situ groundwater and soil treatment, site investigations, corrective action evaluations, operation and maintenance of remediation systems, large soil removal remedial projects, vapor intrusion assessments, environmental laboratory operations, such as QA, QC evaluations, data interpretations, and business development.

All right, that concludes our introduction, so now I will hand things over to Ned Whitty to get us started.

Hello, everyone. It’s good to be with you today. I really appreciate this opportunity from Regenesis, developed some good relationships with folks at Regenesis, including Dane, Trisha Rodewald, and Scott Wilson. Very grateful to have that relationship. And also with Ryan Moore, the PFAS program director, who will be following me today.

So, I’m excited to be here today to share some thoughts with you about the world of PFAS as we know it right now. It’s an ever-changing landscape, and that’s really why I want to take the time to speak with you today because it’s so important, but it is also changing fast and sometimes not changing fast enough, so it’s a difficult thing to kind of keep track of.

I want to just briefly introduce myself. I am, as Dane indicated, I’m practicing with earth and water law. I’ve been practicing for about 36 years in the fields of environmental law and all the various areas that come under it. Earth and water may not be familiar to many of you.

We are a small 20-person law firm of experienced environmental attorneys, a lot of alumni from EPA, DOJ, state government, environmental agencies, and also leading environmental firms and general practice law firms. We have lawyers who are licensed in about 20 states.

And I think that one of the things that differentiates us as well is that being a small and nimble firm, we have kind of a lower cost structure so we can be competitive, but we’re working on cutting edge materials. And it’s really a great place to work. I’ve been with the since January of this year. Speaking of January of this year, we are now about seven months into the Trump administration and that has led us to see a lot of changes in the world of environmental regulation at the federal level and also a lot of changes related to PFAS.

And that’s really what I want to talk with you about today. I’m going to go over the webinar agenda with you today and then I want to take some time to talk a little bit about the important points that I want to emphasize today as part of this presentation.

We’ll be focusing on CIRCLA, which is the acronym, as all of you know, for the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, the federal Superfund laws, it’s also known.

And PFAS has been front and center on the minds of those who follow CIRCLA because as was anticipated in early 2024, The Biden administration identified two PFAS compounds, PFOA and PFOS, as circular hazardous substances.

So, we will talk about the scope of that listing, what the implications were in suing litigation that followed the identification of those substances as hazardous substances, where that litigation stands today, and what the current administration, the current EPA, is doing as far as proposed and considered modifications to that process.

A little bit of crystal balling here still because we’re still seeing some of the dust settling as far as what this administration proposes to do. The other key substantive piece that we’ll be talking about today is the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Also in early 2024, the Biden EPA promulgated national primary drinking water regulations specific to PFAS and identified maximum contaminant levels, that’s the term and the acronym you see here, MCLs, identified schedules for achieving compliance with certain standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act and we’ll talk about the challenges that have flowed from that.

This too has been the subject of litigation by industry groups challenging the authority of the US EPA to promulgate these drinking water standards. And again, we’re seeing some movement here in the federal government to modify some of the Safe Drinking Water Act standards.

Then we’ll talk a little bit about in general, what does this mean and what does this reflect as far as the Trump administration and how it is modifying some of these environmental regulations specific to PFAS. Can we draw any conclusions? Do we know exactly where all of this is going? and who are the winners and losers out of some of this, because that’s an important thing to be aware of.

It may seem that the absence of regulation is a positive thing, but there are times where consistent reasonable regulation can be influential and beneficial for running a business and for economic redevelopment and for brownfield redevelopment. So it’s not always as easy as just doing away with the rules and then thinking that things are be okay.

So we’ll talk about kind of who’s seeing some strategic benefits from this and how do they move forward. But I also want to leave you with some strategies for you and for your clients and businesses and how you can manage and deal with these issues on a going forward basis.

The thing that I really think is important to emphasize is that there is not yet clarity. We don’t have the ability to really understand exactly where of this is going because it’s an incomplete process.

The litigation is still playing itself out, but it’s a little bit of a Orwellian litigation relationship where the entity that is defending the litigation is the Trump EPA, and they’re the ones who probably want to minimize the effect of a lot of that, those regulations under CERCLA and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

But that’s not absolute either, and that’s one of the things that we’ll talk about. When I started first following PFAS and speaking about PFAS eight years ago or so, one of the things that I think we emphasized when we were talking about all of it was uncertainty because at that point in time, we really lacked any regulations at all at the federal level and the states were rushing to try to address these issues and to begin to come up with program. But we were clearly in a phase of uncertainty.

And I think that during the time that the PFAS strategic roadmap under the former administration was kind of being rolled out, some of those Tetris pieces began to sort of fall into place. And we began to understand what those, what those regulations looked like and what they would mean. That wasn’t always a great thing either.

I mean, that’s what I said before is that, you know, some of the determinations have broad and sweeping implications. But again, at least we began to understand what the rules of the road were going to be.

I think right now we continue to be sort of back in a period of uncertainty. I think that’ll reach some clarity in the course of the next 12 to 18 months or more. Certainly during the course of these four years, we think we’re probably gonna have better clarification.

But right now it’s still a period of time where we have uncertainty and that’s making things challenging for everyone. So you’ll hear me use that term and talk about that today. And that really is an important theme to think about. Quick refresher on PFAS before we begin, just from the perspective of a lawyer looking at some of this.

I think the things about PFAS that all of us know, we call it a forever chemical, it’s enduring presence in the environment is really something that is the most challenging element of it. human health impacts which are still sometimes being challenged and contested are very significant as a driving force. So that’s something that we follow.

It also has a lot of impacts on commercial enterprise. I’ve mentioned a couple of those a minute ago with economic redevelopment, brownfields development, transactions, understanding, you know, the level playing field and litigation.

And so those are tough issues to deal with and we don’t have all of the facts known. It is multi-pathway exposure for humans through drinking water, soil, food chain, but also our own homes. There are so many things that have been brought into our homes in the way of products, commercial products that have a potential impact and exposure for us. The liability and compliance targets, the regulations continue to evolve, continue to And, you know, we’re all seeing this in multiple areas of regulation, not just environmental, but it appears that a lot of governing at the federal level now is by executive order.

And that’s a difficult way to find sort of a regular playing field, a regular consistent basis of how we’re going to regulate things when every four years it could potentially swing in the other direction. But these have impacts, I’ve stressed that, and that’s something that I think that we need to pay attention to, is that the impacts are broad.

It’s on property owners and developers, parties to transactions, parties that used or even were just alleged to have used PFAS, I can talk about that in a little bit, and obviously the producers of PFAS have been sort of the common landing point for most litigation. Municipalities, I work quite a bit with representing municipal entities in the state of Wisconsin, Johnson, and it’s been a really tough time for them because they’re trying to govern.

They’re trying to regulate and run POTWs. They also may be running landfills or have other involvement. They’re looking at redevelopment opportunities, and PFAS has been really disruptive for municipalities. I think there are some themes of PFAS as well that are sort of consistently regarded as being influential and significant.

The prevalence of PFAS, we also hear the term ubiquitous. I like prevalence better because it tends to be everywhere we think it’s going to be and look for it. And sometimes it shows up in other locations as well. The regulated concentrations are so small. There’s never been another substance that I’ve worked with on kind of a commonly present basis where we’re talking about concentrations and parts per trillion.

I mean, we’ve even had references to parts per quadrillion and those are very difficult to quantify, difficult to measure, and that makes this a very difficult landscape. The remediation challenges are very difficult as well because of the persistent aspect of PFAS. Doesn’t wanna be treated, and so the technologies that exist are very limited. We’ll talk a little bit more about that.

Obviously, when Ryan is talking, he’ll talk more about the technologies that Regenesis is successfully bringing to bear, but those are important things to keep in mind and keep an eye on as well because the ability to control, contain, and remove PFAS is gonna be very important going forward.

You know, there’s some degree of sort of hysteria and alarm that exists as well. We’ve seen this before with asbestos and PCBs, but I think that’s really, you know, kind of the direction that we see this heading. And what I’ve also observed as a practitioner in this area, but also, you know, just in that sort of cocktail event type approach, I think people are catching on and they’re getting it now.

And I think that that’s something that is going to influence people saying PFAS is showing up in my water provided by my municipality. Why isn’t it being removed? What’s the danger?

And that’s going to lead to, I think, continuing concern on how it’s regulated. The past use issue is an important one because up until 2018 or so, PFAS really wasn’t something that was considered in phase ones and phase twos and transactions. And therefore, we’ve got a lot of properties that have shifted and have never been investigated for PFAS.

And that’s going to be an important issue going forward. And then finally, the circle of designation in early 24 really kind of lit the tinder keg on fire and really created the issue of exposure and concern. So on that topic, I’m going to move on now and talk about our first substantive area, that being CERCLA.

So, when the Biden administration came into authority, we were all aware that, you know, we were likely going to see PFAS focused under the circle law. And sure enough, in 23, that got a lot of attention. And the proposed designation of PFOA and PFOS came out as a proposed rule.

Then, one year following, more or less, in May of 2024, EPA identified PFOA and PFOS as circle hazardous substances. It also was accompanied by guidance documents that US EPA put out indicating that there were going to be certain parties that they were going to recognize as passive receivers, a term many of you are probably very familiar with.

The passive receiver idea is POTWs that are carrying out a municipal function in order to treat wastewater and safely discharge it. But those POTWs are unwittingly sometimes receiving wastewater influence with PFAS in it and they execute that treatment technology, but the treatment isn’t focused on PFAS.

And so it winds up either passing through, being entrained in the biosolids that are then either sent back to the landfill or sent out to land application in fields. And so for that reason, farm fields were, you know, also farmers were part of those parties who were going to be considered to be passive receivers.

And so there was an effort to try to sort of recognize that there were going to be parties that were potentially punished by this circular designation that they wanted to carve out. The rule became effective July 8th of 2024, and we saw some initial sort of engagement of this rule after that.

It was the first time that this particular section of CERCLA had ever been utilized to move a substance from being outside of CERCLA to being regulated by CERCLA, and I think that’s one of the points that has been subject of attack.

But, it also had potentially very broad implications and a prior Regenesis webinar that I participated in includes a lot of that discussion about the ramifications and the consequences of that circular listing.

But, these are some of them here, it triggered potentially nationwide cleanup obligations, potential for broad litigation, reporting obligations for releases of PFAS, concerns regarding reopening of sites and then obviously transactional challenges.

But then what happened? What was kind of the real implications aside from the initial alarm that existed? Well, the reason why PFAS being listed under CERCLA is so significant is that it creates the opportunity to utilize the CERCLA authorities to identify and go after entities that are identified as liable parties.

And, you know, there are the classes of liable parties under CERCLA, the current owner or operator of a facility where hazardous substances are discharged, the owner or operator of the facility at the time that the discharge occurred, the party that arranged for disposal of the PFAS or other hazardous substance at an offsite location, which is another massive concern, and a party that transported that material.

All of them became, you know, subject to potential liability.

The authorities under Section 107 and 113 are basically the tools that either a federal government, state government, or party who has incurred costs and wants to attempt to shift those costs to another party that they can use to go after another entity.

Section 106 of CERCLA enables the DNR to issue unilateral administrative orders. Section 103 is the mandatory release reporting, which I think was kind of one of the initial hot button items, but I think it’s a little bit less significant because there aren’t too many parties that are going to be releasing quantities of PFAS, although it could occur in a Class B release, for example, something like that.

And then I think perhaps one of the more significant impacts also is in the process of property transaction, the use of the ASTM phase one environmental site assessment and the all appropriate inquiry then for the first time, officially, if you will, swept in PFAS into the scope of what a phase one covers.

Again, the reason why these are significant concerns is that the standard of liability under CERCLA is strict, joint, and several, meaning that basically if you have some degree of responsibility, if you fit into one of those categories of responsible party, you could be responsible for all of it.

Your conduct at the time does not matter. That’s the strict nature of the liability. So, it was very onerous and very frightening, really, when PFAS became regulated under CERCLA. Again, due diligence has to explicitly address PFAS. This slowed down real estate transactions, in my observation. I’ve been involved in a number of merger and acquisition deals, and PFAS is one of the priority issues in those environmental elements of deals now.

The concern related also to the reopening of sites that had been closed, and obviously, as we’ve discussed already, the concern related to increased cost recovery litigation.

So then what happened after that? May of 24, effective July of 24, this rule becomes effective, and shortly thereafter, to no one’s surprise, several industry groups, the American Chemistry Council, et cetera, brought actions challenging EPA’s circle rule.

And that’s kind of continuing to this day. And we’ll talk a little bit about the status of that. But they challenged on multiple fronts. The legal basis for challenge included that the EPA had exceeded its authority and the promulgation of these rules designating PFOA, PFOS as hazardous substances. That EPA had used a flawed cost analysis model So that that was something that they also felt was inappropriate.

And I think that the shaky ground also that EPA found itself on is that this is really the first time that Section 102, the identification of a circle hazardous substance, had ever been used. And so I think that that exposes them to the possibility of challenge.

So the litigation basically started rolling along with the Biden EPA defending itself in defending the promulgation process. But obviously that changed in November of 24 into January of 25 with the Trump administration coming in. And so there was kind of a standing down as of the new administration taking office. And since that time, EPA has requested and has obtained several abeyances under litigation, which is a procedural term referring to basically sort of a stay or a hold without any further action being taken.

And the current hold expired on August 18th of 25, so that will be something to keep an eye on and sort of understand where this litigation now begins to proceed when the parties begin to participate in further briefing.

You know, I think that what we hear from observers of this whole proceeding is that it appears likely that EPA will likely ultimately rescind or reopen the PFOA and PFOS listings. So we’ll have to kind of see how that all plays out.

And I’ll talk about this a little bit later as well, but we basically have right now, you know, the Trump EPA defending the actions brought by industry, arguing that these rules are inappropriate, unfair, improperly promulgated.

And I think that, you know, we’ll probably see litigation kind of fizzling out. It’s sort of a very unusual circumstance to see the parties lined up in this fashion. A couple of circular takeaways before we move on to talk about the Safe Drinking Water Act. You know, the identification of PFOA and PFOS as circle hazardous substances created a broad liability sweep.

We began to see that tested little bit with some of the initial actions and proceedings, but really hasn’t been sort of, you know, brought to full fruition. What we do see is continued actions by parties utilizing common law tort theories. And so that’s, that’s where effectively a party is asserting that it has been harmed by the presence of PFAS.

And they therefore bring an action against a tort the party that they believe is responsible for that, and argue that they have an obligation to compensate that party that has been harmed, that incurred damages.

And so I’m seeing a lot of that right now, particularly in the Southeast, it appears to be very well used and a lot of action, a lot of it winds up being sort of sucked into the black hole of the multi-district litigation that most of you are familiar with as well. That’s the proceeding in South Carolina, which basically is consolidating all of the AFFF cases and cases against DuPont and 3M as the manufacturers and producers of PFAS.

The other takeaways on CERCLA, you know, it led to the heightened due diligence obligations and anxiety, but where we find ourselves now is that, you know, the rollback is creating uncertainty and anxiety of its own. So it’s very important to kind of keep an eye on where that’s moving. I have some thoughts at the end of the presentation on how you might be able to do that.

But it’s also important to keep an eye on what’s happening at the state level because that could be another area where, irrespective of what’s happening at the federal, the states may be making a lot of progress on that front. Okay, shifting gears so we can talk a little bit about the Safe Drinking Water Act.

As I indicated in my introductory comments, US EPA announced the national primary drinking water regulations for PFAS in April of 2024. And after that, they finalized standards for PFOA, PFOS, and four other PFAS substances. Two numbers to kind of be aware of are two standards and areas of control and regulation.

The maximum contaminant level goals are non-enforceable standards, which are kind of identified as the ideal. What is the safe level of PFAS exposure for humans? And so for the two most studied and most well-known, PFOA and PFOS, the conclusion was zero. So no exposure, no level is a safe exposure.

And for other substances that are identified here down below, that was identified at 10 parts per trillion. And then there are the numbers that we more frequently see identified in the context of Safe Drinking Water Act, maximum contaminant levels or MCLs, these are enforceable standards. For PFOA and PFOS, that standard was identified as four parts per trillion, and that remains in effect right now as the effective standard.

And then for other substances identified here, we’ve got 10 parts per trillion and then kind of a unique tool that EPA brought to bear called the Hazard Index, where you kind of calculate a relative concentration of different substances if there are four substances present and come up with a number that is measured against that same 10 part per trillion standard.

When this rule was first presented and rolled out, we saw that the standard was initial monitoring was required by 2027, and folks who are smarter than I am have calculated that means that testing is going to have to start in April of 2026. That number is still proposed to be in place by 2029. Treatment compliance was initially identified as the target, that was extended under proposed considerations and proposed rulemaking.

It’s a little bit early to call it rulemaking, but proposed communications from the current EPA to 2031. And, you know, there may be other extensions that might be attractive and proposed as well. Just like the CERCLA listing, this immediately, the identification of the Safe Drinking Water Act MCLs for PFAS immediately triggered legal challenges and so lawsuits were filed commencing in June of 2024 and following.

Similar bases, you know, similar arguments that are being made that EPA exceeded authority, that the cost of compliance was not connected to, you know, the actual risk that was present, that the use of the Hazard Index for concurrent detections of certain short-chain PFAS was inappropriate.

And, you know, again, this is hard when you come up with a novel means of trying something that you wind up being sort of, you know, the first out of the gate. And that’s where I think EPA finds itself on defending the Hazard Index or found itself now because obviously things change with the change of administrations.

But there are some other considerations too. I think we see a, you know, a court system that is probably not predisposed to defer to the agency’s actions? The reversal of Chevron in 2024 in the Loper-Bright decision kind of knocks a barrier of defense for the EPA out.

And then is there a possibility that this action of determining what Safe Drinking Water Act standards are rises to some level, like the major questions doctrine that we saw in some of the climate and air pollution control standards.

So where we are now, after the Biden EPA initially started the defense of these proceedings, the D.C. Circuit and then the new administration came in. The new administration, again, sought stays and deferrals on the defense and briefing and proceedings. Just earlier this summer, last month, the D.C.

Circuit lifted the stay, which means basically that they’re sort of re-engaging and getting back in action. The D.C. Circuit has requested the parties to the proceeding to identify a briefing schedule and approach for continuing proceeding under this litigation.

The briefing is already underway on the MCL validity and legality of the rollback. EPA was asked to identify its position in this litigation by next month in September, and the parties will agree on a briefing schedule following that.

The states are kind of left in a difficult position of trying to understand where this leads them, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that as we proceed through this presentation. So, you know, here again we see some indications from the EPA on where they’re going to go with this.

This is an important one, the first one here, that, you know, what we have seen from Administrator Zeldin is that a statement that EPA intends indicates that it will maintain the PFOA and PFOS MCLs at four parts per trillion, which is kind of contrary to what we hear on so other levels. We know we’ve seen that earlier.

I mentioned that they plan to extend the compliance period until 2031. The other MCLs for the other four substances would likely be rescinded and withdrawn. EPA is basically identifying the cost and technology feasibility concerns as a basis for proposing to undo these.

And what EPA has initially proposed recently is that they want to in a position to propose this rule this fall and then finalize it in early 2026. So a couple of thoughts and then takeaways on the Safe Drinking Water Act standards.

I think we’re governments that are subject, we’re local governments in particular, that are subject to implementing some of these controls find themselves in a very tricky position. They’re looking at a situation where the treatment technologies that are most attractive for dealing with wastewater with PFAS, granular activated carbon and reverse osmosis are very expensive.

The costs are going up and they’re also concerned about the federal funding that was specifically set aside for PFAS treatment under the bipartisan infrastructure law could potentially be at risk.

And we’ve seen other heard of other stories of grants and funding being withdrawn. So you actually see some municipalities and some local governments that are kind of indicating, we think we’re going to go ahead at this point in time. There have been some settlements, as you probably are aware, with 3M and DuPont and other parties.

So some of that money is starting to trickle in. But that’s leading to some inconsistent funding as far as how much money do the local governments have to deal with this, because they’re still seeing that if PFOA and PFOS remain in place, they’re going to have to achieve some compliance, and that’s going to be difficult.

But that sort of uneven ground makes it very difficult for local governments to plan and to budget and to understand how they’re going to meet these targets that are coming up relatively soon of compliance testing by 2027 and compliance with the program by now two years later, 2031.

But some of them are concerned that they’ve got to get going. They’re concerned about exposure to litigation. And, you know, some of them are also interested in making sure that they do what’s necessary in order to achieve primacy, which is a term that is used particularly as it relates to the Safe Drinking Water Act of a local government having enforcement authority and sovereignty as a state does over the control and administration of a regulatory program.

And so some have already started looking at primacy behavior and how they can, how could they can achieve that, and others are kind of confused as to where they stand on the process. It’s a very fragmented process at this point in time. So takeaways, you know, the 2024 MCLs were quite disruptive, but the rollback has been equally disruptive because there’s uncertainty about where this leaves things.

I think we’ll understand a lot more in the coming months as far as positions and assertions taken by the parties to the litigation, who in some ways, as I’ve mentioned before, are aligned, although there are other parties that are amicus or interveners in these proceedings who may have different interests and they’re not gonna back down as quickly.

But I think the state and federal collaboration and cooperation and integration is something that we’re gonna have to watch very carefully. Okay, my remaining time, I wanna talk a little bit about kind of the regulatory posture of the Trump administration in general as it relates to PFAS, but sort of trying to read some tea leaves there as far as where this is going.

I think we’ve seen in general a tendency to slow or reverse environmental rules that are deemed to be burdensome. That is no surprise and that’s been something that we’ve seen moving forward.

PFAS risk is kind of treated on a case-by-case basis, but we’ve also seen that as recently as earlier this summer, the National Enforcement and Compliance Initiative priorities were identified and PFAS is still up there. It’s still something that is identified.

And I think that that reflects the constituents’ interests. PFAS is something that affects humans independently, individually at their drinking water tap. And therefore there’s a great interest in trying to address this. As I mentioned several times before, we’ve got kind of a curious and confusing situation where the litigation defendant in the CERCLA and in the Safe Drinking Water Act litigations is the Trump EPA, no longer the Biden EPA which was defending it.

And that leads to a very sort of complex process where we’ll just have to see whether it’s basically a, is it some form of a defense or is it largely kind of a resolution that basically defers to the regulatory agency to resolve things. And it’s also not a wholesale do away with everything that Biden did.

I mean, we’ve seen from the statement from EPA earlier this year that there’s an interest in retaining the PFOA and PFOS MCLs, which is, I think, caught a lot of people off guard. But we’ll have to see if that ultimately follows through and endures.

I think as we watch CIRCLA and the reconsideration of CIRCLA, I think that, as I said before, we’ll probably see a rescission of the listing of those two substances that are highlighted, probably a reduced exposure to liability risk for businesses, but I think that we’re going to continue to see state and common law liability for certain parties in many cases.

And so it’s not like we’re out of the woods if CERCLA goes away. And I think that that leads to continued uncertainty, maybe greater uncertainty in certain circumstances for parties that are impacted by these regulations. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, I think it’s difficult for utilities and local governments to understand how to address this until they know a little bit further where this is all going to land.

The states are struggling with funding already, and I think that there’s probably not a lot of appetite right now from the federal government to help fill those gaps, so it’s a difficult standard. And compliance, it’s kind of like how and when are we going to meet these standards, but when are they going to become clearer so we understand that.

Some winners and losers in this equation, you know, I think industries with high risk exposures probably could breathe a sigh of relief from a lot of the rollbacks and the likely outcome of some of this litigation.

I think that municipalities that can, with certainty, identify that they need more time and they’re not going to be at risk, that’s kind of an attractive process for them. On the other hand, I think that states and communities that need uniform standards, states with communities with contamination concerns that are planning to deal with PFAS in their wastewater influence, that’s gonna be tough for them.

So I think that they’re gonna be the ones who are struggling under these current regulations. I think transactional parties and certain municipalities, it’s a little bit uncertain now as far as how that’s all gonna play out for them. I wanted to try to stress with you today that these regulatory swings by executive order, as I said before, create instability and uncertainty.

And so it can lead to a lot of paralysis and difficulty and following through and completing transactions. And it also leads to a risk of litigation. I’ve been working on a matter that recently closed a large deal where the party was sued for alleged PFAS in its wastewater stream. And it was the primary issue in the due diligence and environmental allocation of liabilities.

It was a very complex issue to manage, but I think that that’s probably the course that we’re going to see in the future. These rules are kind of open right now. They remain contested, but for right now, PFOA and PFOS remain circle hazardous substances, and the Safe Drinking Water Act, MCLs are in effect.

So it’s kind of a hold your breath kind of a moment here as far as where we are. So they don’t, the Trump rulebacks haven’t stopped everything, they’ve kind of slowed things down, but it’s also led to a bit of suspense as far as where we find ourselves.

And I think the states are going to continue to be major drivers going forward. Some strategic recommendations for you and your clients to keep in mind as far as going forward. I think we need to keep an eye on the federal litigation and see where that’s going. Keep an eye on private party litigation trends, those common law claims, and watch for the proposed and final rulemaking, and also look to the states to see what’s happening to fill those gaps.

There’s a great LinkedIn post that as regularly comes out, an individual named Matthew Von Hendy. It’s called The Business of PFAS. I’d recommend you look at that because he, on a very frequent basis, weekly basis, at least he updates it and you’ll get a lot of information. It’s kind of a compendium of information that’s available.

As far as, you know, how else do you plan? I think that developing compliance plans makes lot of sense. I think that it’s important to consider where is PFAS present in your operations or where are your clients exposed to potential PFAS claims because it can sometimes be just a breath or an allegation that PFAS may have been present on this property and there are plaintiffs firms out there that are representing entities that are anxious to bring a claim against parties like that.

So it’s something that I think maintenance of ability to defend oneself is extremely important. And then the last concept is maintaining a pre-2025 PFAS behavior. By that I mean some of the same things I was just talking about before, but identifying risks associated with the business.

Evaluating what could possibly be done at the business to change processes, look for product alternatives to eliminate PFAS at the property. I’ve worked with a lot of businesses that have Class B firefighting systems, and that’s a great area to look to try to control that and to eliminate the possible release and exposure of PFAS, keep PFAS front and center in transactional due diligence so that you understand what the risks might be present.

And for municipalities where it’s sensible and where it’s cost effective, adapt controls, adopt controls to meet more restrictive standards that are out there so that you kind of live proactively in order to be able to react to the situation. Because again, the elimination of federal regulation is not gonna somehow free up and create an excuse or sort of an exit ramp for parties who otherwise are gonna be targeted by these actions.

Thank you very much. It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you. I look forward to answering questions and I will turn it over to Ryan Moore.

Yeah, thank you, Ned. Very informative. Appreciate the presentation and a lot of the details you provided here. So my name is Ryan Moore. I’m the program director for PFAS remediation here at Regenesis. I’m just gonna give a brief highlight of what we’re doing currently on groundwater and soil remediation using our coital activated carbon technologies. Like Dane said, I’ve got many years of experience within the environmental industry and I’ve been with Regenesis for the last 13 years. Real quickly, if you’re not as familiar with Regenesis, we were established in 1994, mainly as a products company, and we’ve since developed into more of a turnkey remediation solutions company.

The types of projects we’re most often working on are anything from the corner, gas station, dry cleaner site, to large-scale industrial manufacturing facilities and the Department of Defense. Again, we’ve got a wide range of contaminants that we can address.

So I’m going to talk specifically about PFAS, and Ned kind of teed this up really well actually hit on a few of these earlier in his presentation. When I was putting this together, we kind of go through, it was like, what are the main challenges with PFAS?

And like Ned said, he hit on a few of these, but the term forever chemicals, right? It’s mostly because they’re resistant to degradation and the fact that they’re found everywhere. And when I mean found everywhere, in a lot of parts of the country, in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, they’re looking at background concentrations.

Obviously PFAS is not a naturally occurring compounds. And so when they’re saying backgrounds, it means it’s such widespread use of these compounds in these areas that they can’t identify any actual known sources. It’s just very prevalent. Additionally, they’re finding PFAS in areas throughout the world that you never expect to find them.

And one of the examples that I read recently was that, they’re finding it in polar bear blood. The other main challenge that we like to hit on and kind of discuss is the fact that PFAS, fate and transport is very complex, right? With such a large class of chemicals, there’s significant characteristics differences between the classes, right?

Some behave more like a petroleum hydrocarbon, some behave more like a coronated solvent, and some behave like both. So, when you’re developing your site conceptual model or doing your investigation at a project site, you’ve got to really understand the specific mix of species you have and to dive in more of that faint transport to effectively design remedial strategies.

And then the last thing I want to hit on, and Ned hit on this as well, is the cleanup criteria. You know, the MCLs, even if they just leave the PFOA and PFOS in place, they’re talking about four parts per trillion. That’s significantly lower than what we look at for traditional contaminants such as benzene, which is often, you know, a single, a few parts per billion, so order of magnitude lower.

When you look at these challenges and take that in combination, PFAS is very complex. So when I evaluate project sites, when we look at this client site conceptual models, we kind of look at it in four key areas, right? And not that I’m introducing technologies right here, but I just want to kind of highlight where in the plume system or when the contaminants are released, say from an AFFF spill or foam event, right?

It’s spread across the surface, it gets down into that evado soil, okay? That’s a significant source that feeds groundwater plumes. And as you migrate down from the soil through precipitation events, you hit that capillary fringe and the air-water interface, again, significant source of PFAS mass.

So you kind of got to look at that, at strategies, what could you do there? And then obviously the source groundwater, when you’re evaluating sites or putting your site conceptual model, they’re really looking at the source and then going out from there, you know, defining or characterizing the plume from there. And then don’t forget where you’re looking down at the, you know, more of the dilute plume away from the source kind of oftentimes near property boundary lines, etc.

So PFAS remediation, what does that mean? What does that look like? Well, I want to introduce a paper that recently came out. This paper by David Adamson and Chuck Newell and others, it’s titled PFAS Monitored Retention, Framework for Managing PFAS Contaminated Groundwater Sites.

So what does that mean? Well, these guys, when they were working on this, were really trying to take a well-established M &A, modern natural attenuation principles, and seeing how they can utilize that for PFAS specifically.

So they coined the term PFAS Monitored Retention, or PMR. Again, it builds upon MNA, but shifts the focus from degradation to retention, right? This paper highlights a screening process or a criteria that you can use to go through an evaluation, is your site suitable for a PMR approach?

Some of the mechanisms that are being utilized for monitor retention, right? And again, this is all on the paper is absorption into the aquifer material, so natural organics within the soils of the aquifer, matrix diffusion, chemical retention, and dispersion effects.

So when would you use the PMR approach? Well, the graph that you’re seeing here, graph A, this is straight from the paper. And as you can see in the bottom left-hand corner, it says PFAS monitor retention or PMR. So when your plume is dilute and far from the receptor. Right?

Now the receptor could be the drinking water well, it could be the surface body from a groundwater surface water interaction, it could just be the property line, right? You can’t have the plume migrating past the property line at no concentration, so it could be a lot of those things.

So when you look at it, what they’re trying to do, and the paper highlights this framework, is they’re using lines of evidence to say, yep, we have a plume, it’s pretty far from receptor. It’s real low concentrations, and there’s really no risk to that receptor because there are lines of evidence. Plume mass discharge, travel time to receptor, evidence retention in the field, collecting soil mass and soil to identify that.

And then other data acquisition, so flux measurements. Regenesis has a tool we call Flux Tracer. We can measure mass flux and groundwater velocities within the aquifer. So these are some of the tools you can use as a lines of evidence for this PMR approach. Now, what happens if you’re kind of more in that darker blue in the middle there, right?

You’re a little bit closer, you got kind of moderate to high concentrations. Well, the paper identifies this as well. And so they call it PFAS Enhanced Retention or PER. And when would you use this, right?

Well, first you’re using it or you wanna kind of start here when the screening criteria that you use for the PMR can’t be achieved, right? And again, it’s shorter travel time to the receptor, maybe it’s faster groundwater velocity so the contaminants get there quicker, and then that moderate to high PFAS mass.

So what are some of the mechanisms of this PER approach, right? Well, one, you could put a long-lasting permeable retention barrier, PRB, and increase the absorptive capacity to the soil. So you’re reducing mass flux, right? Or source stabilization, source removal, source control. There’s a lot of things that come to play here under the source component of it. But in essence, again, you’re trying to reduce PFAS mobility in the aquifer.

What are some of the benefits, right? Again, we’re trying to drive from a PER to a PMR scenario. So plume stability, shifting your site to the monitored retention strategy so there’s nothing active going on. When you do this approach as well, PFAS is immediately removed from the groundwater and you’re closing the risk pathway. And so that allows for risk-based closure. This is nothing new.

We’ve done this for decades with traditional contaminants, an MNA strategy, or even an enhanced MNA strategy. That’s why Regenesis exists, really, is promoting degradation within like traditional contaminants for an MNA strategy. It’s the same principles. And then lastly, I want to say that, you know, the approach that I’m going to highlight a little bit on the PlumeStop and SourceStop technologies is scalable, and it’s passive, and it could be deployed very quickly in the field.

And what I mean by passive, again, is there’s no ongoing O &M. You’re not sending guy out to start a pump or to keep a system running or you don’t have to have electricity to keep a system running to extract groundwater. You’re not having to generate waste that you have to manage over time. So PlumeStop, what is it? It’s chloro-activated carbon.

If you’ve attended any of these Regenesis webinars, chances are you’ve been exposed to PlumeStop. But in essence what we’ve done is taken activated carbon and we processed it and milled it down to various micron scale size carbon particles. We suspended as a colloid, allowing it to distribute widely under low pressure.

In essence, what we’re trying to do is create these large underground filters for the aquifer. This graph here, this is actually from the Camp Grayling site demonstration site we did many years ago. And what I wanted to highlight, this is what we expect for these PRB scenarios of treatment, right? So you’ve got this dark blue line at the top.

That’s what the mass that’s fluxing into your treatment. You’ve got the black arrow, that’s the PlumeStop application or the PRB, the permeable retention barrier, and then you have the downgrading monitoring well.

So as you put this in place, groundwater migrates through, the PFAS is captured, and you have clean water discharged on the downgrading side. So this is what we’re expecting on our groundwater treatment.

We have a zero-failure tolerance for PlumeStop. And so we expect this on every product site that we work on. Now for source treatment, we have a technology called SourceStop.

SourceStop is used to stabilize PFAS in place. We want to reduce the leachability. It comes in two formulations. The first is a solid product, which is a low-dust composite combining colloidal-activated carbon and powdered-activated carbon.

It’s got this engineering wettability. And what I mean by that, being low dust, zero, kind of like zero dust, when you’re mixing it in the soil, the moisture it’s in the product already, helps penetrate into those fine grain materials.

So if you’re kind of mixing like a lawnmower clay, when you mix this, the coital carbon part is released, it penetrates in that clay and gets really good distribution through the mixing process. What we’re trying to do again, most often, is this is applied in the Vado soil.

And so this could be physically mixed through the entire Vado soil column. It could be where the excavation, you pull some soil out and you put it in the bottom of the excavation and you make kind of a horizontal there. Either way, it’s very effective at treating the soils right in place.

Now the liquid version’s a little different. It’s most often going to be injected. So for sites where you can’t get an excavator in or a mixing tool into the area, we’re going to inject this in the Vado soil we’ll also inject it right there at the capillary fringe where we know significant amount of mass is held up.

This also could be physically mixed. We’ve had some clients do that multiple times. It works just as well as the solids does. But the great thing again is it’s building upon the chloro-activated carbon technology of PlumeStop to create the source valve. Now, what do we expect from our goals, right?

What do we expect from results for this type of treatment? And so this is another graph of the Camp Grayling facility where we demonstrated this site a few years ago. Now, what you’re seeing here is data for an SPLP analysis, right? So this is a leachate procedure that mimics what the expected leaching would be of the soil through many years from precipitation events, right?

So if rainwater drives through and kind of percolates through this area, how much PFAS mass do you expect to come out over time? And as you can see, the baseline sample here in this sample is predominantly PFOS, but you know, significant amount in that leachate, over 1,000 nanograms per liter of total PFAS. We do the mixing and immediately post-treatment, right after mixing, we collected a sample and sent it to the lab, again, for the SPLP analysis, and we had greater than 99% reduction.

We went back out to the site six months later and then a year later and collected additional samples. And as you can see, we’ve maintained greater than 99% reduction and leachability of the treated soils. So this is what we expect from the soil treatment as well, if it’s liquid or if it’s the solid version.

A couple of final slides, you know, just wanted to talk about, you know, no one’s done more in-situ treatment for PFAS and Regenesis. We’ve got over 70 sites worldwide. You can see here the little red flags on the maps, significant the numbers here in the Midwest and Michigan and the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, but then also in Europe and Scandinavia and the UK.

And then we’ve got, this is 275 designs in review. I think it’s even more than that now. Now I’m gonna leave you real quick. There’s a lot of information. I only had a short amount of time to kind of go over this. And so if you wanna click on this QR code, it leads you to several different topics. So we can kind of go over technical articles and different papers published on the subject between the proof of concept, field applications, the modeling, again, the soil of treatment, and then just different articles on the technology comparisons.

So with that, I think we have time for questions and we’ll go from there. Appreciate it.