This month on “Wonderful Water,” join 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey for a conversation with Blake Hodge, OWASA communications specialist, about a topic making national news: PFAS.
PFAS were a part of OWASA’s annual OWASA water quality report card, and a topic discussed at length, but information gathering and consistent monitoring go back further that the current news cycle.
“We take our responsibility for delivering high quality drinking water to customers across Chapel Hill and Carrboro very seriously, and our current drinking water does meet all state and federal regulations,” said Hodge. “… For PFAS, we’ve been monitoring our raw water — that’s the water that is actually in our reservoir before it gets pulled in to our treatment process — along with our treated drinking water, and that goes back to 2018. We’ve been monitoring that on a quarterly basis, specifically for PFAS. And then, in 2019, we added some monitoring at different points of our wastewater treatment process.”
The OWASA PFAS Monitoring Program is readily available on OWASA’s website, where customers can read through information, statistics and sign up for updates delivered as they become available.
“We do see an overall reduction in [PFAS] levels from our raw water to treated drinking water, and that’s where we want to evaluate with the new regulations coming out, what sorts of treatment techniques we’re going to need to meet that regulatory level and then what we might be doing beyond that,” said Hodge. “There are a couple of options to consider, but really just trying to take our time now and make sure we’re making the right choice, the right investment, for the community.”
(Featured image via OWASA)
You can listen to the full conversation below, and visit the Wonderful Water page here for more interviews and stories about the work OWASA does in our community.
Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents use roughly 7 million gallons of water a day, and “Wonderful Water” is a monthly conversation sponsored by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority highlighting its work to keep our community growing and water flowing.
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