Tewksbury Officials Concerned But Not Alarmed By PFAs

TEWKSBURY, MA — Tewksbury officials are "not alarmed" by a renewed permit that could result in toxic pollutants in the Merrimack River, they said Tuesday after an investigation published in the Boston Globe. While they are looking for more information from the Department of Environmental Protection, they said that Tewksbury's water filtration happens to be well-suited to PFAs, the type of chemical in question. The permit allows a New Hampshire landfill to send up to 100,000 gallons a day of polluted runoff to Lowell's Duck Island Clean Water Facility.

The water empties from Lowell's treatment facility empties into the Merrimack River upriver of towns including Andover and Tewksbury that use it as a source of drinking water. According to the Globe report, the landfill's owner "acknowledged that the runoff includes high amounts of PFAs," a type of toxic chemical known as "forever chemicals" due to how long they take to break down. Tewksbury has not tested for PFAs recently, but plans to.

"Federal regulators say tests of drinking water in communities downstream from the Lowell plant, including Andover, Lawrence, Methuen, and Tewksbury, found no evidence of harmful amounts of the six most prevalent PFAS chemicals in 2014," according to the Globe report. "But that was before the landfill signed a contract with the treatment plant in 2017 to take the waste water. The water has not been tested for PFAS since then, EPA officials said."

"One good thing that Tewksbury has going for it, in the issue of PFAs ... there's any number of things that can be in your source water that you can need to treat ... but the recommended treatment process for PFAs is granulated activated carbon treatment, which is actually what we use," said Scott Brinch, Tewksbury's assistant superintendent of utilities.

The town installed the granulated activated carbon filter "probably decades ago," said Brinch, and not with PFAs in mind, but it puts the town ahead of the curve on the issue.

"We have tested before in years past — I think the last time in 2016, a parts-per-billion test, and we had no detectable level," he added.

The department would like to see data regarding what levels of PFAs are being put into and getting released from the treatment plant in Lowell.

"We're always concerned, naturally, if there's an issue with our river water," Brinch said. "I wouldn't say we're alarmed by it. It's a concern. It's on our radar. We've been communicating with the [Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection]."

They plan to do more testing as they get more information, Brinch said.

"Once we get more information we can make recommendations."

Currently, the department isn't worried about any particular bogeymen affecting Tewksbury's water supply, Brinch said.

Andover public works officials could not be reached for comment, but the department's 2018 water quality report does not include testing for PFAs either. A large portion of Andover's drinking water comes from the Merrimack River.

Christopher Huffaker: 412-265-8353 or chris.huffaker@patch.com.