KDHE: PFAS contamination is widespread in Kansas; monitoring and cleanup work will expand

Leo, a Kansas Department of Health and Environment official, told the House Committee on Water that PFAS — a family of persistent man‑made chemicals often called "forever chemicals" — have been detected across Kansas and will require expanded monitoring and cleanup work.

The presentation, given during a Committee on Water meeting, summarized uses of PFAS in consumer products and firefighting foams, outlined health concerns and federal regulatory changes, and described early sampling results in Kansas showing low but widespread detections in streams, lakes and fish tissue.

KDHE described PFAS (also spoken of as PFOS/PFAS in the presentation) as a large group of man‑made compounds used since roughly the 1950s in items such as nonstick cookware, stain repellents (for example, Scotchgard and similar products), microwave popcorn bags, food wrappers and aqueous film‑forming foams (AFFF) used by firefighters. Leo said the carbon‑fluorine bond makes these chemicals exceptionally persistent in the environment.

"This is purely informational today," Leo said, adding that Kansas is only beginning to address PFAS and that many questions remain unanswered. He emphasized that PFAS can circulate through air emissions, wastewater discharges, biosolids applied to farmland and landfill leachate, and that the compounds can bioaccumulate in fish and in dairy cattle.

KDHE summarized several points of regulatory change and response that will affect Kansas: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set enforceable drinking‑water limits for a subset of PFAS compounds (KDHE said standards currently exist for six PFAS chemicals), the substances have been listed as a hazardous substance triggering Superfund authorities, and PFAS are expected to be regulated as hazardous waste in the near term. Leo said the federal drinking‑water limits for those compounds are in the range of "4 to 10 parts per trillion," and that utilities must monitor and comply with the new standards by "April of 29" (year as spoken in the hearing).

KDHE described limited statewide sampling to date. Agency staff told the committee they have found PFAS in source water at Clinton Lake and detections at multiple surface‑water sampling sites, with a few "red dots" of higher concentration that will require source investigation. KDHE also reported preliminary fish‑tissue results showing detectable PFAS in the muscle of sampled fish and higher values in some biosolids samples (KDHE cited biosolids values up to "6,000 parts per trillion" in the presentation).

On wastewater and treatment, KDHE said industries that discharge PFAS‑containing wastes will face new pretreatment and reporting obligations, and that wastewater treatment plants will need to know how much PFAS they are passing to streams and to biosolids. KDHE noted it has stood up drinking‑water PFAS testing at the Kansas Health and Environmental Laboratory (KHEL/KHAL in the presentation) but has not yet implemented EPA methods for soils, biosolids, fish and landfill leachate because those analyses are more complex and expensive.

Committee members asked about options for destroying PFAS and about groundwater monitoring. Leo said research is ongoing; available treatment approaches include activated carbon, ion‑exchange resins and emerging flotation and supercritical oxidation methods for concentrating and destroying PFAS, but those technologies are currently costly. On groundwater, KDHE said including PFAS in broader groundwater monitoring would be appropriate, and noted that biosolids application maps and historical biosolids practices will help target sampling in rural areas.

KDHE repeatedly framed the presentation as preliminary and informative rather than prescriptive. Leo told the committee that EPA enforcement exemptions have limited immediate liability for some municipalities and farmers — for example, the agency has in some cases used enforcement discretion for past, unregulated discharges and biosolids applications — and that questions of who will pay for cleanup at widespread sites remain unresolved.

KDHE outlined next steps the agency expects to undertake: update Kansas' risk‑based cleanup standards with new PFAS criteria; conduct background and targeted sampling (including re‑evaluating closed contaminated sites and orphan sites where responsible parties no longer exist); expand in‑state laboratory capacity for non‑drinking‑water PFAS methods; and investigate the cause of high‑concentration sampling sites.

Committee members thanked KDHE for the briefing and indicated more hearings and follow‑up will be needed as federal and state standards evolve.