On April 28, 2025, the EPA announced upcoming agency actions to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). While the list of actions is lengthy, experts say it lacks substantive measures.
In line with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s Powering the Great American Comeback initiative, the Agency’s “work in this space will advance Pillar 1: Clean Air, Land, and Water for Every American, and Pillar 3: Permitting Reform, Cooperative Federalism, and Cross-Agency Partnership,” according to an EPA news release.
“I have long been concerned about PFAS and the efforts to help states and communities dealing with legacy contamination in their backyards. With today’s announcement, we are tackling PFAS from all of EPA’s program offices, advancing research and testing, stopping PFAS from getting into drinking water systems, holding polluters accountable, and providing certainty for passive receivers. This is just a start of the work we will do on PFAS to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water,” Zeldin says in the release.
Zeldin’s action items are strengthening the science; fulfilling statutory obligations and enhancing communication; and building partnerships.
Strengthening the science
- Designate an agency lead for PFAS to better align and manage PFAS efforts across agency programs.
- Implement a PFAS testing strategy under Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 4 to seek scientific information informed by hazard characteristics and exposure pathways.
- Launch additional efforts on air-related PFAS information collection and measurement techniques related to air emissions.
- Identify and address available information gaps where not all PFAS can be measured and controlled.
- Provide more frequent updates to the PFAS Destruction and Disposal Guidance—changing from every 3 years to annually—as the EPA continues to assess the effectiveness of available treatment technologies.
- Ramp up the development of testing methods to improve detection and strategies to address PFAS.
Fulfilling statutory obligations and enhancing communication
- Develop effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) for PFAS manufacturers and metal finishers, and evaluate other ELGs necessary for the reduction of PFAS discharges.
- Address the most significant compliance challenges and requests from Congress and drinking water systems related to national primary drinking water regulations for certain PFAS.
- Determine how to better use Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) authorities to address releases from the manufacturing operations of both producers and users of PFAS.
- Add PFAS to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) in line with Congressional direction from the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
- Enforce Clean Water Act and TSCA limitations on PFAS use and release to prevent further contamination.
- Use Safe Drinking Water Act authority to investigate and address immediate endangerment.
- Achieve more effective outcomes by prioritizing risk-based review of new and existing PFAS chemicals.
- Implement Section 8(a)7 to smartly collect necessary information, as Congress envisioned and consistent with TSCA, without overburdening small businesses and article importers.
- Work with Congress and industry to establish a clear liability framework that operates on polluter pays and protects passive receivers.
Building partnerships
- Advance remediation and cleanup efforts where drinking water supplies are impacted by PFAS contamination.
- Work with states to assess risks from PFAS contamination and the development of analytical and risk assessment tools.
- Finish the public comment period for biosolids risk assessment, and determine a path forward based on comments.
- Provide assistance to states and tribes on enforcement efforts.
- Review and evaluate any pending state air petitions.
- Resource and support investigations into violations to hold polluters accountable.
“There are a lot of vague promises in what was announced this week, but honestly, it really doesn’t treat the PFAS forever chemicals crisis as, frankly, the five-alarm fire for public health that it is,” said Dr. Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health in the environmental health program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., according to CNN. “The key decisions that they were supposed to be making on those two things, they’re completely silent on.”
The EPA made groundbreaking moves last spring in two PFAS regulations:
- The National Primary Drinking Water Rule (NPDWR) established the first-ever maximum containment levels (MCLs) for PFAS in drinking water.
- The first Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) hazardous substance listing was made for PFAS.
Water industry organizations and others filed lawsuits arguing that the regulations were too costly and that the “EPA failed to base the PFAS MCLs on the best available science and that the limits are inadequate to protect public health,” notes law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.
The litigation was suspended by the EPA when President Donald Trump took office “so it could decide whether to continue to defend the rules, rescind them, revise them or uphold them — a decision the agency has still not made,” CNN reports.
“The EPA’s last deadline for its next steps on the rule regarding the two PFAS subtypes was April 25, but the agency asked for an extension that day. On Monday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted the request and pushed the deadline to May 30. The EPA has also requested an extension of the deadline for its decision on whether to uphold the rule limiting PFAS set last year; the new date is May 12.”