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By Jordan King
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Every person in the country is set to have drinking water without dangerous levels of cancer-causing "forever chemicals" after President Joe Biden's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the new, nationwide restrictions on PFAS levels in April.
But the U.S. goes to the polls in November and former President Donald Trump may be elected to a second term. Several environmentalists and Democrats have said they are worried that would mean the rollback of EPA policies targeting pollution and climate change.
"Trump EPA officials have telegraphed, as plainly as spray painting on the face of the Mona Lisa, that they will roll back many if not all of the Biden EPA environmental rules," the Environmental Working Group Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Scott Faber told Newsweek.
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Faber believes this will include the new PFAS regulations, adding: "It couldn't be clearer that voters will have a really simple choice between clean water or dirtier water."
But Andrew Wheeler, who served as the EPA administrator under Trump from February 2019 to January 2021, rejects this idea.
He told Newsweek that while some "details" may be reexamined under Trump, Wheeler's EPA was generally in favor of PFAS regulations. He said the action plan being implemented by the Biden administration was "started under [their] administration" with Trump's EPA.
In 2019, the Trump administration's EPA unveiled a Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Action Plan. It set out to evaluate the need for maximum containment levels, begin the steps to propose designating the chemicals as "hazardous," develop groundwater cleanup recommendations and more.
Just before Trump left the White House in 2021, his EPA determined on January 19 that perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) need to be regulated in drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act. This started the congressionally mandated process for the EPA to make regulations law.
The details of the current PFAS regulations will have been determined by the Biden administration, which may well be changed by a Trump administration, which has historically been less favorable toward environmental regulation it considers going too far.
But "not every adjustment amounts to a rollback," Wheeler said.
However, this did not comfort Faber, who cited Project 2025, a guide from the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican administration. In it, dealing with the EPA makes up two of the first "Needed Reforms: Day One Priorities."
The Heritage Foundation says Congress should be notified that the "EPA will not conduct any ongoing or planned science activity for which there is not clear and current congressional authorization."
Additionally, "the new President's Inauguration Day regulatory review/freeze directives should avoid exceptions for EPA actions."
It adds: "This freeze should explicitly include quasi-regulatory actions, including assessments, determinations, standards, and guidance, that have failed to go through the notice-and-comment process and may date back years."
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Energy policy expert Mandy M. Gunasekara, who served as chief of staff for Trump's EPA, called the organization "an agency that has long been amenable to being coopted by the Left for political ends against the need to implement the agency's true function."
The 920-page document recommends that a new Trump administration should "revise groundwater cleanup regulations and policies to reflect the challenges of omnipresent contaminants like PFAS."
It also advocates to "revisit the designation of PFAS chemicals as 'hazardous substances' under CERCLA." Also known as Superfund, CERCLA provides federal authority and funding to deal with hazardous waste sites that are a public health or environmental risk.
Newsweek has contacted the Heritage Foundation and Gunasekara for details on what the organization wants to be revised and revisited, and why.
Although it does not explicitly mention PFAS regulations, Project 2025 lists drinking water and clean water as a "very targeted area where increased spending would be in the nation's interest," despite "the overall goal being to reduce government spending."
A fellow at Brookings Metro who is considered an expert in transportation and water infrastructure, Joseph W. Kane told Newsweek it is impossible to know for sure what a Trump administration would do with PFAS regulations "until we know who the EPA administrator is."
He also said that PFAS regulations are important to the Biden administration because it is part of the major investment it has undertaken into infrastructure.
Faber said: "No administration in history has done as much to protect us from toxic chemicals that cause cancer and make it harder to start a family than the Biden EPA. There's no comparison."
Overexposure to high PFAS levels has been linked to serious health problems, including cancer, liver and heart damage, developmental impacts on children and fertility.
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