One of the Department of Defense’s top environmental officials told lawmakers Tuesday it could take decades to get in compliance with EPA’s first-ever limits on “forever chemicals” in drinking water.
Those limits, finalized last week, give water providers five years to bring PFAS contamination below the acceptable thresholds.
“This is a sea change in terms of the way that the department needs to engage around this specific issue,” Brendan Owens, assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment, said during a House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness hearing.
“We have been working in anticipation of this rule coming out for the last eight months, … and we have been working in partnership with the military departments to put together that plan on how we’re going to address these in a prioritized way,” Owens continued. “It’s going to be a significant, decadeslong, long-term challenge that we need to get after consistently.”
