City water staff and state experts report Flagstaff drinking water is legally compliant; state testing and PFAS support available

City water services staff presented the annual water-quality report at the Flagstaff Sustainability Commission meeting in June 2026, and state officials described statewide sampling and assistance related to PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).

The commission heard from Jolene Mononttoya, regulatory compliance section director, and Christa Snow, drinking water laboratory supervisor, who summarized the city’s Consumer Confidence Report and monitoring results. Snow said Flagstaff’s primary sources are Upper Lake Mary, mountain runoff/inner basin sources and multiple wells, and explained that the report includes only detected analytes and required EPA boilerplate language. On UCMR5 sampling (the fifth unregulated contaminant monitoring rule), Snow said the system’s sampling between 2023 and 2025 produced one detection of the PFAS compound PFPA at the Lake Mary entry point (EPDS3). She reported two administrative reporting errors that were corrected and submitted late but said there were no missed monitoring events or MCL exceedances for regulated contaminants.

"We had one detection for PFPA at our EPDS3, which is the Lake Mary source," Snow told commissioners. She added that the city has developed a service-line inventory for lead and copper under the revised rule and has found no lead service lines to date, though some portions of the inventory remain unknown.

The commission then heard a statewide briefing from Matt Narter, a senior hydrogeologist with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Narter summarized federal and state developments on PFAS and described a statewide drinking-water sampling effort that supplemented UCMR testing by sampling more than 750 small systems. Narter said the combined state/UCMR dataset covered more than 900 systems; most systems showed no detections of the six compounds tied to the EPA MCLs, some had detections below MCLs, and roughly 12% of systems had at least one sample that exceeded an MCL during the sampling period (a finding Narter cautioned was a point-in-time result, not necessarily a running annual-average exceedance).

Narter said Arizona is assisting small and disadvantaged systems with monitoring and planning, and listed available and proposed funding: about $5 million in state funding plus approximately $84 million of federal assistance (with roughly $20 million expected in an additional tranche in the fall) to support emerging-contaminant work in small and disadvantaged communities. He described treatment technologies that remove PFAS—granular activated carbon, ion exchange and reverse osmosis—but stressed those approaches can be costly and operationally intensive for small utilities.

Commissioner Cameron Carlson framed a public-health follow-up, noting independent health-guidance groups can set thresholds that differ from federal limits and recommending expanded local testing for contaminants not currently reported at the needed scope. Carlson recommended that staff prioritize testing and, where warranted by results, develop a monitoring and treatment planning framework that could include advanced treatment technologies such as reverse osmosis at the utility scale.

Commissioners and staff discussed trade-offs of advanced treatment (costs, energy use and residuals disposal), alternative media (biochar and iron-treated media) and the need to coordinate with the Water Commission and water-resources staff (Aaron/Erin Young were identified as technical contacts) to collect existing data before proposing major capital changes.

Next steps noted during the meeting included: making existing Flagstaff sampling results and UCMR data available to commissioners, coordinating a follow-up conversation with Water Resources staff to clarify current monitoring and planned upgrades, and considering targeted pilot testing or modeling to prioritize further action.

The meeting record shows no change in regulatory status for Flagstaff water at this meeting; staff emphasized the city is legally compliant and is coordinating with state partners to plan ahead for evolving federal and state PFAS rules.