Article Masthead

  • Category: Policy & Regulation
  • Topic: PFAS Wastewater Regulation
  • Region: North America
  • Signal Type: State-Federal Permitting Policy
  • Published Date: 2026-09-23
  • Original Source Date: 2026-09-22

01 What Happened

State environmental regulators are pressing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to advance PFAS research and develop numeric standards that can support wastewater discharge permitting after EPA withdrew its 2022 PFAS permitting guidance.

InsideEPA reported the request on September 22. The discussion follows EPA’s rescission of the 2022 memorandum that had encouraged permitting authorities to use NPDES permits, pretreatment programs, monitoring and best-management practices to address PFAS discharges.

The new state-level push does not mean EPA has adopted numeric PFAS effluent limits. EPA’s earlier multi-industry work noted that no national technology-based numeric standards had been established for PFAS in industrial wastewater discharges. States have therefore developed different approaches using monitoring, state water-quality standards, narrative criteria and permit conditions.

02 Key Takeaways

01
State regulators want more federal science and numeric values that can be used more consistently in discharge permits.

02
The request comes shortly after EPA withdrew its 2022 permitting guidance, increasing uncertainty about the federal baseline.

03
No new national PFAS effluent standard has been created; state programs continue to differ.

03 Why It Matters

PFAS wastewater permitting needs defensible numbers, but toxicology, analytical methods, source profiles and treatment data do not always support one simple national limit.

Without common values, states may rely on different combinations of water-quality standards, narrative criteria, monitoring triggers and technology-based conditions. Similar facilities can therefore face different obligations in different jurisdictions.

For publicly owned treatment works, the issue is especially important because conventional biological treatment does not reliably destroy PFAS. PFAS can pass to effluent or concentrate in biosolids and other residual streams.

04 ATLAS Engineering View

The engineering need is broader than selecting one concentration limit. A credible PFAS program requires representative sampling, consistent analytical methods, source identification and a clear mass balance through the treatment system.

For municipal systems, upstream source control can be more practical than relying on end-of-pipe removal after multiple waste streams are mixed. Industrial-user inventories, targeted sampling and segregation of high-PFAS streams can provide more useful information than broad plant-wide monitoring alone.

Where treatment is required, activated carbon, ion exchange and membrane separation may all play roles, but spent media, concentrate and disposal routes must be considered as part of the PFAS mass balance.

05 Sources