GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — Your drinking water may be contaminated with forever chemicals. Husker scientists look for solutions while city utilities may file suit as officials take different strategies with the shared goal of safer water.
You turn on the tap and take a drink without thought but that water may contain so-called forever chemicals according to Nirupam Aich, the McNeel Associate Professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
“There is nothing like that in the natural environment,” Aich said.
Husker scientists say a class of chemicals known as PFAS were widely used starting in World War II and for decades found in a host of everyday products like cookware.
“Anything and everything. Raincoat, carpet, textiles,” Aich said.
As cities like Grand Island test their water and wastewater they may find these chemicals.
City Attorney Kari Fisk said, “These forever chemicals if they exist now or in the future we have to test for them, there’s monitoring, compliance issues, expenses our water system could have trying to treat these chemicals.”
The City of Grand Island may join a class action suit.
“These sorts of class action suits are designed to help get compensation so that way the folks that help create the problem have to foot the bill to fix the problem. If we are impacted it provides another source so taxpayers and ratepayers weren’t footing the entire bill,” Fisk said.
Meanwhile scientists look at the aftermath of these chemicals. Aich said the synthetic compounds have strong bonds that don’t break down naturally.
Reverse osmosis could be an option but would be costly.
“The second problem with just taking them out is we are concentrating them and we have to dispose of them somewhere so what do we do with that so the major challenge is not only taking them out but destroying them,” he said.
Nebraska researchers are working to develop 3D printed nanotechnology that could break the bond and safely remove these chemicals from our water.
It’s not just an urban issue. Aich said it’s common for treated sewage from wastewater treatment plants to be used as fertilizer on farms.
“I have a project looking at PFAS is in biosolids applied to farm lands and if it will leech into rivers and lakes and what will happen to them so what I realized is we have a critical mass at UNL to work on this topic in larger scale so we issued something called the Great Plains PFAS Initiative,” he said.
Aich says much of the work focuses on the east and west coast and he’s building partnerships to study the impact across the heartland.
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