Tuesday,  February 11 , 2025

Linkedin Pinterest
News / Clark County News

Vancouver council approves contract for PFAS treatment at Water Station 9

In 2023, city began program for testing and reporting 'forever chemicals' in drinking water

By Shari Phiel, Columbian staff reporter
Published: February 4, 2025, 4:00pm

Removing forever chemicals from Vancouver’s municipal water supply remains a high priority for the city. On Monday, the city council approved a $1.3 million contract with Portland engineering firm Brown and Caldwell for treatment at Water Station 9.

The city has been working to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS or forever chemicals, from its water supply after the chemicals were first detected in 2020.

“We extract our water from groundwater sources. We actually have three different aquifers that we pull from. There’s the Upper Orchards aquifer, the Lower Orchards aquifer and what we like to call the Deep Sand and Gravel aquifer,” Mehrin Selimgir, a senior civil engineer with the city’s public works department, told the council.

Selimgir said some water stations draw exclusively from a single aquifer and that treatment technologies used can vary depending on the aquifer.

Testing for forever chemicals has become a greater priority in recent years for many cities, counties and states, with PFAS present in everything from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam. The chemicals can end up in water supplies through industrial release, discharges from sewage treatment plants, leaching from landfills or through the use of firefighting foam. Once produced, they never go away — hence the nickname forever chemicals.

Vancouver already has treatment plans in place at Water Station 4 and Water Station 14, relying primarily on activated carbon to filter forever chemicals from the water supply.

In 2023, the city began a new program for testing and reporting PFAS in drinking water. Test results from April of that year found three of Vancouver’s nine water stations had higher levels of PFAS than allowed by the state. The most common compounds found at Water Stations 4, 14 and 15 were perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS).

The state threshold is 10 parts per trillion for PFOA and 15 parts per trillion for PFOS. Vancouver’s Water Station 14 measured 11½ parts per trillion for PFOA and 18.6 parts per trillion for PFOS.

The latest test results from November found PFAS higher than state or U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits at eight of the city’s nine water stations. According to a city report, the recommended limits are based on long-term exposure to PFAS throughout an individual’s life and represent a conservative level at which no adverse impacts are expected over a lifetime of drinking the water.

Only Water Station 14 tested above 10 parts per trillion for PFOA and Stations 4 and 14 tested above 15 parts per trillion for PFOS. Additionally, Water Station 8 tested at 14.9 parts per trillion for PFOS.

Funding for the new treatment plan will come from grants and the $10 million in low-interest loans the city received from the state Department of Commerce in September.

The city council also approved loan contracts for PFAS treatment and the replacement of the existing chlorine gas treatment system at Water Station 4. Selimgir said approval of the contracts was needed to keep the city on track with construction requirements tied to the low-interest loans.

“We had already begun design of the Water Station 4 PFAS treatment upgrades project. We just had our 60 percent design completion meeting this morning,” Selimgir told the council. “We anticipate having final design completion by about May of this year and going out to bid this summer.”

Final design of the Water Station 9 treatment system will come back before the council later this year.

Note: This names of the city’s three aquifers has been updated. An earlier version of this story listed one of the names incorrectly.

Community Funded Journalism logo

This story was made possible by Community Funded Journalism, a project from The Columbian and the Local Media Foundation. Top donors include the Ed and Dollie Lynch Fund, Patricia, David and Jacob Nierenberg, Connie and Lee Kearney, Steve and Jan Oliva, The Cowlitz Tribal Foundation and the Mason E. Nolan Charitable Fund. The Columbian controls all content. For more information, visit columbian.com/cfj.

Loading...