Eradicating eternally chemical compounds from Vancouver’s municipal water provide stays a excessive precedence for town. On Monday, town council accepted a $1.3 million contract with Portland engineering agency Brown and Caldwell for remedy at Water Station 9.
The town has been working to take away per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, higher generally known as PFAS or eternally chemical compounds, from its water provide after the chemical compounds had been first detected in 2020.
“We extract our water from groundwater sources. We actually have three different aquifers that we pull from. There’s the Upper Orchards aquifer, the Lower Orchards aquifer and what we like to call the Deep Salmon Gravel aquifer,” Mehrin Selimgir, a senior civil engineer with town’s public works division, informed the council.
Selimgir stated some water stations draw solely from a single aquifer and that remedy applied sciences used can fluctuate relying on the aquifer.
Testing for eternally chemical compounds has develop into a better precedence lately for a lot of cities, counties and states, with PFAS current in the whole lot from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam. The chemical compounds can find yourself in water provides by industrial launch, discharges from sewage remedy crops, leaching from landfills or by the usage of firefighting foam. As soon as produced, they by no means go away — therefore the nickname eternally chemical compounds.
Vancouver already has remedy plans in place at Water Station 4 and Water Station 14, relying totally on activated carbon to filter eternally chemical compounds from the water provide.
In 2023, town started a brand new program for testing and reporting PFAS in ingesting water. Take a look at outcomes from April of that 12 months discovered three of Vancouver’s 9 water stations had larger ranges of PFAS than allowed by the state. The most typical compounds discovered at Water Stations 4, 14 and 15 had been perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS).
The state threshold is 10 components per trillion for PFOA and 15 components per trillion for PFOS. Vancouver’s Water Station 14 measured 11½ components per trillion for PFOA and 18.6 components per trillion for PFOS.
The newest take a look at outcomes from November discovered PFAS larger than state or U.S. Environmental Safety Company limits at eight of town’s 9 water stations. In line with a metropolis report, the really useful limits are primarily based on long-term publicity to PFAS all through a person’s life and characterize a conservative stage at which no adversarial impacts are anticipated over a lifetime of ingesting the water.
Solely Water Station 14 examined above 10 components per trillion for PFOA and Stations 4 and 14 examined above 15 components per trillion for PFOS. Moreover, Water Station 8 examined at 14.9 components per trillion for PFOS.
Funding for the brand new remedy plan will come from grants and the $10 million in low-interest loans town obtained from the state Division of Commerce in September.
The town council additionally accepted mortgage contracts for PFAS remedy and the alternative of the prevailing chlorine gasoline remedy system at Water Station 4. Selimgir stated approval of the contracts was wanted to maintain town on monitor with development necessities tied to the low-interest loans.
“We had already begun design of the Water Station 4 PFAS treatment upgrades project. We just had our 60 percent design completion meeting this morning,” Selimgir informed the council. “We anticipate having final design completion by about May of this year and going out to bid this summer.”
Closing design of the Water Station 9 remedy system will come again earlier than the council later this 12 months.