Senate hearing on PFAS disclosure bill spotlights costs to utilities, calls for transparency

Senator Hosteller presented a bill to require companies that discharge significant quantities or percentages of PFAS-related materials to notify municipal treatment systems and local officials.

"Basically...we want to make sure there's transparency that people are aware of what's coming to them," Senator Hosteller said, outlining thresholds in the draft (for example, a 25,000-gallon discharge or operations that constitute more than 5% of a process stream in the draft language) and describing the bill as a tool to give municipal operators advance notice.

Jesse Demumbrian Chapman, executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative, told the committee his organization has worked on PFAS issues for a decade and said lack of information has led to slow responses and contamination of publicly owned treatment works. "What this bill is endeavoring to do is shine a little bit of light on that relationship so that local leaders have public accountability for developing a plan," Chapman said.

Senator Hosteller and witnesses cited local costs: Hosteller said his city of Rome installed an approximately $100,000,000 treatment system in recent years to mitigate PFAS and that communities have needed to change intakes and take other measures. He also said he would provide health-data materials to the committee when available.

Committee members asked whether the state or federal regulations already cover this and how accuracy of self-reported questionnaires would be verified; witnesses said the bill requires a principal to sign under penalty of perjury that the information is correct but does not create new monitoring or testing obligations.

The matter was presented as a hearing; the committee took no votes and asked for clarifying language and follow-up details.