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MPCA presents PFAS removal report with fee‑design options, wide cost estimates for drinking water and wastewater work
Summary
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency told the Capital Investment Committee that a fee program could fund PFAS removal, but significant uncertainties remain about who would pay and how much revenue would be needed; preliminary cost estimates range from millions for targeted drinking‑water actions to billions for large‑scale wastewater treatment.
Assistant Commissioner Kurt Koudelka and Fox Char, MPCA’s PFAS coordinator, presented a legislatively requested PFAS removal report on April 29 that lays out options for who would pay PFAS fees, how fees could be structured, and revenue targets tied to specific remediation goals.
MPCA officials emphasized there is substantial uncertainty about the universe of PFAS manufacturers and users in Minnesota because federal and state reporting programs are still maturing and some data may be protected as confidential business information. Depending on reporting thresholds and definitions, the universe of fee payers could range from a handful to thousands of entities. To manage that uncertainty, MPCA recommended the legislature set a revenue target tied to a policy objective (for example, financing drinking‑water treatment or wastewater source‑reduction) and then apportion the total across payer classes, rather than setting per‑pound fees that would make revenue unpredictable.
The report included preliminary cost examples: MPCA estimated about $163,000,000 to treat PFAS at the community drinking‑water systems currently known to need treatment (roughly 20 systems named in prior work); sampling 10% of private wells was estimated at about $580,000,000, and if 2% of those wells required treatment the treatment cost could be about $7,300,000. MPCA provided a wide estimate for wastewater treatment approaches and said end‑of‑pipe treatment for all wastewater could cost in the billions — MPCA cited an illustrative figure of $23,300,000,000 for back‑end treatment at scale — and said source‑reduction and regional pretreatment could be much less expensive (MPCA estimated a range from $7 million to $85 million for wastewater source‑reduction efforts).
MPCA staff noted current destruction technologies for PFAS are not proven at facility scale. Removal methods such as granular activated carbon or ion exchange concentrate PFAS into spent media that must be managed off site; in some cases contractors transport spent media out of state for high‑temperature hazardous‑waste incineration. MPCA also told the committee that Minnesota law will prohibit intentional uses of PFAS by 2032 unless an unavoidable‑use designation is granted, which could shrink the pool of fee payers over time and affects program design.
Committee members asked about differentiating fees by PFAS chemical, fees on manufacturers versus downstream users, and whether fees would be meant to pay cleanup of existing contamination or to finance transition away from PFAS; MPCA said those are policy choices and highlighted data limitations that would affect detailed rate design.
MPCA presented the report as a menu of policy choices and recommended the legislature identify the program goals, set a revenue target, and then select apportionment rules among payer classes. No bill vote occurred during the April 29 hearing.
