Kalamazoo wastewater discharges "an early win" in effort to reduce PFAS
PFAS discharges from Kalamazoo's wastewater treatment plant are now under the state limit of 12 parts per trillion for surface water.
That's down from a high of about 53 parts per trillion last summer.
The improvement comes after the state installed a carbon filtration system in a former plating plant. The plant was dumping large amounts of PFAS chemicals into the plant's treatment system.
PFAS is a class of chemicals associated with health problems.
Scott Dean is a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Dean calls it "an early win," in the state's effort to find sources of PFAS contamination, and clean them up.
"Because it's really important to break this cycle of PFAS in the water system," he says.
Dean says PFAS is a huge emerging problem in the state, so there's much more work to be done.