Andrew Shapiro, the town’s environmental contamination administrator, told the Capital Program Committee that the wastewater treatment plant and landfill leachate act as “passive receivers” of PFAS and that targeting landfill leachate could be the most economical place to remove the chemicals. "We have 2 passive receivers, the wastewater treatment facility and the landfill, that are both receiving PFAS," Shapiro said during the briefing.

Shapiro described bench-scale work showing PFAS concentrate in foams, a process called foam fractionation, and said the town has spent roughly $900,000 on sampling and feasibility work to date. "That's about $900,000," he said, summarizing the characterization and testing budget. He said a newly approved Select Board contract for pilot planning with an engineering firm will cost about $400,000 to scope vendor options, site constraints, power and staffing needs and a procurement strategy.

The presentation included concrete concentration data: Shapiro reported leachate concentrations "on the order of, like, 30,000 nanograms per liter," and noted Massachusetts’ drinking-water guideline for context: "Compare that to the drinking water standard in Massachusetts, which is 20 nanograms per liter." He explained that foam generated from leachate can concentrate PFAS further, making it feasible to collect a much smaller, PFAS-rich waste stream for destruction.

Committee discussion centered on two questions: whether the town should fund technology trials and pilots, and how to pay for any implementation. Some members, including Howard, argued municipal capital is scarce and experimental pilot work may be better left to private industry or state programs. "It doesn't seem to me the business of a municipality" to be a testing ground for speculative technologies, Howard said. Other members, including Brian Turbot, said Nantucket’s unique waste streams and early sampling work justify local piloting; they pointed to past opportunities where vendors supplied pilot equipment with an option to purchase later to limit town capital exposure.

Staff noted a regulatory driver: the town’s discharge permit is due to be reissued within a year and is expected to include PFAS requirements. That pending permit, they said, increases the urgency to identify viable technologies. Shapiro and operations staff emphasized uncertainties that remain — including final disposal or destruction methods for PFAS-rich foam — and said the pilot-planning contract is intended to reduce that uncertainty before a full pilot or full-scale implementation.

Next steps include completing the pilot planning work, compiling examples of other municipalities’ deployments, evaluating vendor-supplied pilot options that could limit upfront cost, and returning to the committee with refined cost estimates and a proposed procurement approach. The Select Board has approved the pilot planning contract and the committee will consider capital requests tied to a pilot in future meetings.

The committee did not vote on implementation funding during this session.