EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stood inside a working water treatment plant in Commerce City, Colorado, on Monday and launched the first agency-wide strategy in EPA history aimed squarely at the technology needed to defeat PFAS, the "forever chemicals" contaminating drinking water across the country. The plan is called PFAS TECH — Technology, Evaluation, Coordination, and Harmonization — and its job is to speed up the treatment and destruction technologies that can pull these chemicals out of water and break them down for good, instead of leaving local water systems to fight them one town at a time. "We know that we cannot solve PFAS challenges with yesterday's tools," Zeldin said at the Klein Water Treatment Facility, a plant that opened this year and is already stripping PFAS out of the local supply.
PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are man-made chemicals used since the 1940s in firefighting foam, waterproof coatings, nonstick cookware, food packaging and a long list of everyday products. They earned the name "forever chemicals" because they barely break down: they persist for decades in soil and groundwater and build up in the human body. Most Americans have detectable PFAS in their blood, one widely cited study estimated that roughly 200 million Americans have received drinking water containing some PFAS, and federal scientists have found at least one type of PFAS in an estimated 45 percent of the nation's tap water. That is why EPA's own review of the science matters to families: exposure to certain PFAS is linked to decreased fertility, increased high blood pressure in pregnant women, developmental delays in children and an increased risk of some cancers. The federal drinking water standards now in force cap the two most studied of these chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, at 4 parts per trillion each — the lowest level EPA says is measurable and treatable — and EPA estimates those standards will reduce exposure for about 100 million people.
The strategy Zeldin launched has three working parts. First, it pours federal weight into research and development: funding, new partnerships with states, universities, businesses and water systems, and support for early-stage ideas, including research grants for PFAS destruction through EPA's Science to Achieve Results and Small Business Innovation Research programs. The technologies being tested include foam fractionation, which skims PFAS out of water, and supercritical water oxidation, which in EPA testing destroyed more than 99.99 percent of the PFAS in firefighting foam at industrial scale. Second, it moves those technologies out of the lab and into pilot projects under real conditions — at Superfund cleanup sites, military facilities, wastewater treatment plants and drinking water systems, including work with about 40 drinking water utilities to find the treatment methods that work best. Third, it turns the results into practical help any community can use: plain-language guidance, a new online tool called the Break the Bond Navigator, and hands-on help for water systems trying to find funding and technical assistance.
For the families who drink the water, this is where the strategy is supposed to land. A small town that finds PFAS in its wells today faces a hard problem alone: the treatment technology is expensive, the expertise is scarce, and the bill usually ends up in residents' water rates. Under PFAS TECH, that town gets a federal partner — pilot-tested treatment options it can copy, grant programs aimed at destroying the chemicals rather than just moving them around, and help tapping the billions of dollars EPA says are available in low-cost Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loans. Commerce City is the working example Zeldin chose for the launch: its water district built the Klein plant with more than $60 million in federal grants plus a low-cost EPA loan, after its groundwater was contaminated by the nearby Rocky Mountain Arsenal, which once manufactured chemical weapons, and, a federal lawsuit alleges, by a firefighting training facility. And Zeldin was explicit about who should carry the cost of all this. "We believe in a model called polluter pays," he said. "Ratepayers shouldn't be responsible for cleaning up PFAS contamination from their own supply. They didn't cause it, they shouldn't have to pay for it." He added that it is on Congress to pass legislation making sure households are not left holding that bill. The deadlines give the push its urgency: water utilities must complete their initial PFAS testing by April 2027 and meet the federal limits by 2029 — though EPA has separately proposed giving systems more time and dropping the limits on four other PFAS chemicals while keeping the strict limits on PFOA and PFOS, a question still open.
Zeldin framed the launch as a health mission, saying the Trump EPA is "laser-focused on making America healthy again" and on protecting Americans from PFAS exposure, and that the strategy "will advance scientific discovery, demonstrate the real-world feasibility of advanced technologies, and help reduce PFAS in the environment." He was joined at the plant by EPA's regional administrator, Cyrus Western, and by the area's congressman, Rep. Gabe Evans, while a water district official, Kipp Scott, walked the group through the ion exchange system doing the actual cleanup work. EPA's PFAS lead, Assistant Administrator for Water Jess Kramer, said the agency is actively pursuing public-private partnerships because they "will accelerate technology breakthroughs to reduce PFAS in water while also reducing the cost of treatment to save money." Honesty requires two notes of caution. The strategy is largely a coordination of existing and planned projects, and Zeldin did not attach a total price tag to it, saying only that the money would come from the agency's budget. Environmental advocates also argue that research programs do nothing about the PFAS Americans are drinking today and worry the agency is promoting future technology while proposing to soften parts of the drinking-water rules. What is not in dispute is the scale of the job: the chemicals are in the water of millions of American homes, they do not go away on their own, and Monday's launch is the federal government's bet that better, cheaper technology — proven in real plants like the one in Commerce City — is how they finally come out.
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