EPA letter signals possible soil delisting; agency may include groundwater, notes no PFAS requirement

Vicky, a board member, told the Lafayette City Turf Board on Oct. 28 that she had received a written letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saying the agency is ready to proceed with delisting soil at the landfill and that it would like to attach groundwater to that delisting.

"They promised to proceed with the delisting of the soil," Vicky said, reading from the letter. She said EPA told the board the agency is prepared to submit the delisting paperwork in the next round, which must be submitted by Nov. 14 to be considered in that cycle. Vicky also said the 5-year review has been signed and that EPA indicated there was "no requirement for PFAS" as part of the delisting.

The letter, Vicky said, also "agreed with our arsenic position after 40 years," a point she framed as a major win for the board after prior verbal assurances from EPA that were not on the record. "We couldn't have asked for a better letter," she said.

In discussion that followed, Vicky described PFAS as ubiquitous in consumer products and in wastewater, and said her team found PFAS at high levels across several tested coffee pod types. She argued that because PFAS are widespread, requiring an expensive PFAS-focused remediation at the landfill could be disproportionate relative to other common sources of PFAS exposure. "How can you prove even that there is an impact on a human life if what I'm meeting every day has more PFAS than what it's going to be in the groundwater of the landfill?" she asked.

A board member asked whether the board's letter to EPA helped secure the written response; Vicky said she believed it did, adding that the board's status as public officials makes the correspondence more likely to draw agency attention. She also noted that some federal properties, including Department of Defense sites, face different PFAS timetables because of costs and operational impacts.

The Turf Board did not take a formal policy action on the EPA letter during the meeting; the report was presented as an update and the board thanked Vicky for the information. The board indicated it would await the federal government reopening and the next formal EPA delisting round to see whether the submission proceeds.