On February 20, 2024, Executive Director Michael Sanderson testified before the Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee in support of SB 956- Environment- Water Pollution Control- Protecting State Waters from PFAS Pollution (Protecting State Waters From PFAS Pollution Protection Act) with amendments. This bill establishes a discharge limit for PFAS chemicals in any water from a significant industrial user. It requires these users to significantly decrease PFAS chemicals from their waters in order to enter any wastewater treatment infrastructure.
While aligned with the broad intent, counties requested an amendment exempting local government facilities, to prevent duplication of already tightening federal and state standards for PFAS mitigation. "If the central idea in the bill is 'polluter pays,' which makes sense as environmental policy... our water systems, our landfills, we are receivers, not generators," he said. "We're already under the Department of the Environment with those facilities, so we're part of the solution already."
Senator Hester and the Department representatives indicated they had worked on bill amendments that would reframe the entire legislation, in to a more flexible framework for Maryland's plans going forward.
From MACo Testimony:
An analysis by the American Water Works Association found that PFAS mitigation in public water systems could cost taxpayers $3.2 billion annually, with mitigation across various contributing industries variously also measured in the billions. What is clear is that, today, the actual costs to remedy PFAS remain uncertain, the impacts of PFAS on public health have yet to be fully understood, and no technology yet exists to accurately detect or remove PFAS to levels deemed safe.
The central policy concept of SB 956, however, fails when it is potentially applied to publicly owned facilities, especially municipal solid waste locations (landfills, rubblefills, and the like). If enacted, the proposed requirements could necessitate an additional roughly $1 million in unplanned expenditures per landfill, abandoning the conceptual "polluter pays" framework in the legislation, as local Page 2 government solid waste facilities are not the generators of such materials, but merely the recipients after other actors generate or use the initial products. SB 956 is also duplicative of existing standards and authority under the Maryland Department of the Environment, who has the state-level oversight to govern various contaminants at municipal solid waste facilities operated by county or city governments. Locally run facilities should not be included under the reach of SB 956 alongside the industrial and commercial entities, who are the root source of these pollutants.
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