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Town staff report PFAS program progress, conference presentations and treatment options
Summary
Town managers and staff summarized five years of PFAS work, presented a new ‘PFAS cycle’ communications framework at a New England water conference, and described treatment options (concentrate/accumulate/destroy) and pilot efforts to reduce biosolids for disposal.
Town staff gave the Select Board an update on PFAS work the town has pursued since 2020, including technical investigations, community outreach and a recent presentation at the New England Water Environment Association conference in Boston.
Greg (town staff) said members of the town traveled to the conference and that Chuck Larson (Manager of Strategic Projects), consultants from CDM Smith and other staff presented a paper titled “Building a community-specific PFAS cycle to inform program management and communications on Nantucket.” Andrew Shapiro, the town’s new Environmental Contamination Administrator, described sessions he attended on PFAS treatment technologies, machine learning for PFAS source identification and wastewater surveillance.
Chuck Larson summarized the town’s “PFAS cycle” as a program-management and public-communications graphic the town used to identify source-reduction opportunities and to prioritize projects across wastewater, landfill and drinking-water protection. He said the presentation (slides available online) included a new, simplified PFAS cycle diagram (slide 9 in the posted materials) intended for public use.
Staff discussed the three-part framework for PFAS management: concentrating PFAS (separating and collecting), accumulating PFAS (capturing it in a media) and destroying PFAS (breaking the carbon–fluorine bond). Larson said destructive technologies are generally more cost-effective for concentrated waste streams and that, for Nantucket, concentrated media might be shipped off-island for destruction rather than housing destructive infrastructure locally.
David Gray, the town’s SOAR director, described conference takeaways on biosolids handling, noting drying technologies that could reduce biosolids volumes by up to about 75% and potential vendor pilots to test small quantities of local material. Staff said the town’s PFAS website contains extensive documentation and that Andrew Shapiro will lead a planned website overhaul to make materials easier to use.
Board members asked about liability and responsibility for PFAS in the environment; staff said state and federal agencies and vendors are actively engaged, that legal and policy pathways are evolving, and that many municipalities face similar disposal and treatment challenges. Staff said they will continue to evaluate pilot technologies and report back to the board.
