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Amara Strande, an outspoken advocate for water quality and for preventing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in her home state of Minnesota, died in April 2023 at the age of 20 due to a rare form of liver cancer that occurred when she allegedly was exposed to contaminated drinking water from a 3M Company plant in Oakdale, Minn.
Her sister Nora Strande, 17, was on Capitol Hill 20 March 2024 to continue Amara’s work, lobbying lawmakers in the U.S. Senate’s Environmental and Public Works Committee (EPW) to pass more stringent regulations governing the use and disposal of PFAS.
As a result of the efforts of the Strande sisters, Amara’s Law was signed 2 June 2023 in Minnesota banning the use of PFAS in certain products starting in 2025, but work remains for Strande and others who hope to see more wide-reaching federal standards adopted for PFAS.
“Educating the public about what's going on, about these chemicals is a really big part [of the solution],” Strande told 3E. “We need to crack down on these companies and tell them they can't do what they've done so they won't do it again. We just have to press hard enough.”
Some of the foundational legislation and regulatory frameworks that facilitate the protection of U.S. water quality and cleanup of sites afflicted by pollutants like PFAS were established during or before the Reagan administration.
The scope of the 1972 Clean Water Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) — enacted by Congress on 11 December 1980 — has since broadened, but some water and chemical experts are pushing for updated and more robust protections and enforcement measures, contending that a tighter law will increase consumer safety and discourage violators from continuing to discharge PFAS.
Because DuPont de Nemours Inc. and 3M were among the companies that concealed risks posed by PFAS, it set Congress back when lawmakers sought to craft landmark environmental laws, Scott Faber senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) told 3E. 3E previously reported that an EWG study claimed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also knew about the toxicity of PFAS.
“Many of these problems would have been addressed if companies had not hidden the risks posed by PFAS,” Faber told 3E. “Unfortunately, our regulators also knew [about the risks] at the time, especially FDA. The FDA has known since the ‘60s that PFAS was toxic, but nobody thought to tell Congress or other regulators what FDA knew. And we're all paying the price for that.”
Faber was part of a group of experts and industry leaders gathered to testify 20 March 2024 in front of the EPW, urging Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to facilitate a plan for providing EPA with the sole authority to implement CERCLA and to designate discarded PFAS as hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
“We need strategic national policies and investments to help us do several things,” EPW Chair Sen. Tom Carper, (D- Del.) said. “First, determine the spread of PFAS contamination; second, identify the health threats that these chemicals can pose; third, explore the best methods to rid our water and lands of them; and lastly, collectively find a path forward to making the actual polluters pay while protecting innocent parties.”
CERCLA-Navigating the PFAS Regulatory Landscape
CERCLA, also known as Superfund, created a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries and provided broad federal authority to respond directly to the release — or the threat of the release — of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment.
As previously reported by 3E, the overturning of the “Chevron deference,” established in a landmark 1984 U.S. Supreme Court case, could pose challenges to the EPA’s attempts to reopen Superfund sites that were closed.
CERCLA also established prohibitions and requirements concerning closed and abandoned hazardous waste sites, provided for liability of persons responsible for releases of hazardous waste at these sites, and established a trust fund to provide for cleanup when no responsible party could be identified.
CERCLA was amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act on 17 October 1986.
The law authorizes two kinds of response actions:
Short-term removals, where actions may be taken to address releases or threatened releases requiring prompt response.
Long-term remedial response actions, that permanently and significantly reduce the dangers associated with releases or threats of releases of hazardous substances that are serious, but not immediately life threatening.
These actions can be conducted only at sites listed on EPA's National Priorities List. CERCLA also enabled the revision of the National Contingency Plan (NCP), which is the federal government’s blueprint for responding to incidents involving the releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants.
Defining Liabilities
James Kenney, cabinet secretary of New Mexico’s Department of Environment, recommended in his testimony that Congress increase and direct funding to EPA-authorized state RCRA programs to manage PFAS-related responsibilities.
Kenney told 3E he was unclear about why his state was held to a different standard by the Department of Defense (DoD) in its decision to sue New Mexico over the state’s efforts to hold the agency accountable through RCRA requirements for PFAS contamination at Cannon Air Force Base despite the U.S. Air Force issuing a permit to clean up the site. Conversely, the former Reese Air Force Base in Texas did submit to an Air Force investigation around PFAS in accordance with RCRA.
“That’s a question that I suppose DoD would have to answer,” Kenney told 3E. “Because we can't get a technical or legal logical answer.”
Kate Bowers, a legislative attorney for the Congressional Research Service (CRS), said the DoD and other federal departments or agencies would also be potentially liable for releasing PFAS into the environment.
The four categories of potentially responsible parties under CERCLA, Bowers said in her testimony, would include:
- The current owner or operator of a facility.
- Former owners or operators of a facility at the time hazardous substances were disposed of there.
- Generators and parties that arranged for the transport, disposal, or treatment of hazardous substances.
- Transporters of hazardous substances to a facility.
Robert Fox, who testified on behalf of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) and the National Waste Recycling Association (NWRA) said he supported a limited statutory exemption for “passive receivers” of PFAS, and that landfills are piloting cutting-edge technology to treat PFAS in leachate, or water that has percolated through a solid and extracted out some components of the material though which it has passed.
“Landfills are and were passive receivers of these waste streams containing PFAS,” Fox said. “They never manufactured or used PFAS in their operations but only received them due to the presence in waste created by virtually every person in the country. There is no practical way for landfills to identify or segregate household wastes containing PFAS from general waste.”
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About the author: Stefan Modrich is a Washington, D.C.- based reporter for 3E. He covers the latest developments in environmental health and safety policy and regulation. Modrich previously wrote for S&P Global Market Intelligence, The Arizona Republic and Chicago Tribune. He is an alumnus of Arizona State University and the University of Zagreb.
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