This month, when the Environmental Protection Agency announced the first-ever federal rules on how much of a half-dozen deadly PFAS chemicals to allow in your tap water, 40 public wells in Orange County, California, instantly became unsafe for human consumption, at least on paper.

The fact that those wells will continue to supply water to hundreds of thousands of local residents – even while they’re under a strict schedule that calls for them to be PFAS-free by 2029 – is part of a broader story about the hard choices and high costs associated with human exposure to PFAS compounds, also known as “forever” chemicals.

And in Orange County, where exposure to those chemicals is higher than it is in most of the country, the story also is about how local water officials have been scrambling for years to stave off a potential health disaster they had no hand in creating.

Since 2020, when the state of California responded to research showing forever chemicals are more deadly than previously believed by issuing its own PFAS limits (and by calling for affected wells to be closed during clean-up, a stark difference from the new EPA rules), the county’s biggest water agency has closed 62 of the county’s 220 wells, installed filtration systems in them, and, to date, reopened 38.

But that’s just a start.

Water officials believe the effort to rid the local water supply of forever chemicals will cost at least $1.8 billion over the next 30 years, with spending needed for everything from industrial-strength filtration systems and disposal services to legal fees. And while much of that money will come from the chemical companies that made PFAS compounds and hid their dangers from the public, as well as from federal and state grants, consumers also will pay, with some local water bills eventually going up by $5 to $10 a month.

“It’s been a big challenge, and it’ll continue to be a challenge,” said Jason Dadakis, executive director of water quality and technical resources at Orange County Water District, the agency that controls the county’s aquifer and supplies 19 retail water districts used by about 2.5 million residents in north and central Orange County.

Dadakis, an affable man with degrees in geology and hydrology, described the new federal limits as “an expected but important” step in what he expects will be a decades-long effort to scrub PFAS from the local water supply.

“The EPA put out a draft, late last year, about what they expected the new levels would be, so we had some warning. And, pretty quickly, based on that and on our testing, we knew we’d have to have those 40 additional wells into our treatment construction program,” Dadakis said.

When asked if the new federal rules are affecting the district, Dadakis said simply: “Yes, very much.”

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