Water quality testing at the Lebanon landfill in New Hampshire is continuing to detect levels of PFAS.
According to Valley News, Lebanon hired Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc. to conduct the PFAS management study. This study looked at the city’s landfill and wastewater treatment plant.
The city has drilled several test wells at the landfill. Upon testing the leachate, levels of four PFAS compounds were discovered, according to Civil & Environmental Consultants, reported Valley News.
“The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the problem and begin to explore options to address PFAS on either the landfill site and/or the wastewater treatment facility,” said Civil & Environment Consultants in an information packet, reported Valley News.
New Hampshire’s House passed a bill (HB 1547) last month that aims to address potentially hazardous PFAS levels in food, water and more. The bill directs NHDES to set regulations by November 2023 to limit the presence of PFAS in soil.
“The bill tries to acknowledge that the PFAS problem is unique and the complications of regulating at such low levels are many,” said Mark Wimsatt, NHDES waste management director, reported Valley News. “We need to have specific rules to set it apart from other contaminants that we regulate.”
The study’s goal is also to have a better grasp on how to respond to state and federal changes in PFAS standards.
These issues were first discovered in 2019, reported New Hampshire Public Radio. There were six lined landfills currently operating in the state – in Rochester, Berlin, Conway, Bethlehem, Lebanon and Nashua, which, according to the state Department of Environmental Services, sent a collective 100 million gallons of leachate for processing at nearby wastewater plants.
According to DES spokesman Jim Martin, PFAS had been found in the leachate of all those landfills, reported Valley News.
