Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office announced March 26 that the state will begin the process for establishing Maximum Contaminant Levels for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). According to the news release, the state “has long advocated that the federal government establish national standards to protect the nation’s water from PFAS contamination, but [it] can no longer wait for the Trump Administration to act.” The press release does not state which specific PFAS would be regulated. PFAS is a general term for the whole group of man-made chemicals that include PFOA, PFOS, and Gen-X, but is comprised of thousands of different chemicals.
The governor goes on to direct the state’s PFAS Action Response Team to form a science advisory workgroup that will be tasked to “review both existing and proposed health-based drinking water standards from around the nation to inform the rulemaking process for appropriate Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL) for Michigan by no later than July 1, 2019.”
The statement directs the Michigan Department for Environmental Quality to immediately file a request for rulemaking to establish an enforceable MCL in response to the workgroup’s conclusions. The directive states that this proposal will be completed on “an accelerated schedule with input from stakeholders by no later than October 1, 2019.”