Examining the Impact of EPA’s CERCLA Designation for Two PFAS Chemistries and Potential Policy Responses to Superfund Liability Concerns."
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House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 2
Before we start preemptively creating loopholes in our environmental laws, we must make certain that we are addressing a real problem. EPA has a history of developing enforcement discretion policies and was done in this case. And I believe we should wait and see if there is a systematic failure of this approach before Congress grants any exemptions. After a decade of slow and deliberate action, we're now only beginning to get our arms around the challenge to prevent PFAS from entering the environment in the future and to remedy it where it exists. We are still in the early days of implementing a comprehensive regulatory strategy that protects our communities from the damage PFAS are causing. And I cannot support any effort that jeopardizes or undermines the progress that has been made to date, whether that is by the administration or Congress. So with that, I thank you, Mr. Chair.
I look forward to today's discussion. Welcome the panelists, and yield back.
Speaker 1
Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky, the chairman of the full committee, for five minutes for an opening statement.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Chairman Palmer, for convening this final committee hearing of 2025. The first session of the 119th Congress is coming to a close, and I'm proud of the work we've done to facilitate the delivery of more affordable energy to families across the country, pare back burdensome regulations, and foster domestic innovation and manufacturing. I absolutely believe we can have a thriving economy while simultaneously protecting our environment. To that end, we must consider whether our current environmental laws are fit for the purpose to meet today's increasingly complex world. The Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, CERCLA, also known as the Superfund law, was enacted in 1980 to establish a framework for assigning liability for the cost of cleaning up contaminated sites.
Though the super fund law has been amended several times today, we will consider where there works to facilitate the cleanup of land contaminated by two PFAS chemicals that the EPA has designated as hazardous substances, and how liability concerns may impact water utilities, farmers, land developers, waste management, and other sectors of our economy. Additionally, we will assess what additional guidance may be needed for parties who want to be good stewards of the environment and follow the law but are unsure how to do so in the context of camp contamination from these two PFAS chemicals. I am confident we can rise to the challenge and avoid making decisions driven by fear and misinformation. The word PFAS contributes concern because it is important that we acknowledge that the PFAS family contains thousands of different chemistries, many of which are found in electronics, medical devices, infrastructure materials, safety equipment, and other essential uses that are not believed to pose a risk. Understanding this will help us focus our efforts on limiting the harms associated with specific substances most closely linked with adverse health and environmental impacts.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today. I appreciate you all for being with us, and I know we're going to have a productive dialogue. And I will yield back.
Speaker 1
The chair now recognizes Mister Menendez, who will be giving an opening statement on behalf of Mister Paul, the ranking member of the full committee. The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized for 5 minutes.
Speaker 4
Thank you, chairman. I support holding polluters accountable for the harm they cause to the people we represent. So I'm discouraged that my Republican colleagues are not centering this hearing around exposed communities who are bearing the brunt of PFAS contamination and ensuring that we prevent further exposure to these toxic chemicals. Instead, the majority called today's hearing to discuss creating new liability shields under our nation's Superfund law for corporate polluters. PFAS chemicals are an urgent threat to public health.
They are toxic, persistent, and have been found in our water, soil, and air, as well as in products Americans use every day. Aptly referred to as forever chemicals, PFAS have long been linked to cancers, infertility, impaired child development, and thyroid disease, among other harms. Each day, we are finding PFAS in more communities across the country and are learning about the health harms they face as a result of this exposure. Urgent action is needed to address widespread contamination and reduce our community's exposure to these dangerous chemicals. That is why I'm pleased that Emily Donovan is here today.
Missus Donovan is a concerned mother, advocate, and community leader who has fought tirelessly to lift up the voices of her neighbors, including carrying the stories of those who tragically aren't with us anymore. She brings an important perspective to this hearing, the voice of a community in North Carolina that has been devastated by PFAS contamination. The topic of today's hearing does little to offer solutions to communities like Missus Donovan's. Rather, it leans into unfounded claims to bolster recent PFAS deregulatory actions taken by administrator Zelden for corporate polluters and future exemptions requested by special interests. For example, since the superfund listings for PFOA and PFOS went into effect, opponents claim they would lead to a flood of liability lawsuits against municipal entities that have simply not materialized.
There are existing tools to ensure downstream entities aren't held liable for upstream pollution so long as they properly manage hazardous substances and don't release PFAS into the environment. Yet, they continue to push a narrative of needing an exemption under Superfund. Giving municipal entities such a carve-out would remove a powerful incentive for responsible management of hazardous waste products and risk dangerous PFAS releases into communities without consequence. I should note that these same entities, water utilities, have a long history of following the law and managing dangerous Superfund chemicals like arsenic, chromium, and lead safely and effectively as part of their everyday operations. There is no reason to suggest managing PFAS would be any different.
Exempting parties from circular liability let those entities off the hook for removing PFAS from their own systems, responsibly handling PFAS waste, reducing PFAS contamination for their customers, and holding polluters accountable for the harm they cause. If we are serious about addressing PFAS issues in this country, we must examine how to expedite the cleanup of toxic PFAS chemicals while simultaneously working to prevent new exposures to these dangerous substances. Unfortunately, this is not what Republicans in the Trump administration are doing. Instead, the administration has worked to roll back health protective drinking water standards and limit PFAS reporting requirements, effectively leaving the EPA and communities in the dark. Under democratic leadership, the house passed the bipartisan PFAS action act, which provided real solutions to some of our pressing PFAS issues.
It authorizes critical resources to water systems and communities grappling with contamination, and stems the tide of PFAS chemicals into the environment. The legislation is centered on the science and the real-life experience of communities like Missus Donovan's. Discussion to weaken PFAS regulations, however, misses the mark, and only serves to harm workers, families, and children. Americans are already struggling with rising health care costs and loss of access to life-saving care. Deregulation will make the PFAS problem worse, breaking the promises we made to communities like Missus Donovins.
The companies that knew for years that they were pumping dangerous PFAS into local towns must be held accountable. Creating a litany of carve-outs from critical environmental protection will hamstring our ability to do just that. Our constituents and communities deserve action to solve this PFAS crisis once and for all. Thank you, and I'll go back.
Speaker 1
This concludes members' opening statements. The chair would like to remind members that pursuant to the committee rules, all members' opening statements will be made part of the record. We want to thank our witnesses for being here today and for taking the time to testify before the subcommittee. Witnesses will have the opportunity to give an opening statement, followed by a round of questions from the members. Our witnesses for today are Susan Bodine, partner, Earth and Water Law, Lawrence W. Falby, chair, international council shopping centers, environmental, and land use policy committee.
Mister Tracy Meehan, executive director of government affairs, American Water Works Association, and Miss Emily Donovan, cofounder of Clean Cape Fear. Appreciate you being here today. I now recognize Miss Bodine for five minutes to give an opening statement.
Speaker 5
Thank you, Chairman Palmer and Ranking Member Tonko, for inviting me to speak today on the subject matter of this hearing, examining the impact of EPA circular designation for two PFAS chemistries and potential policy responses to Superfund liability concerns. As was mentioned, I believe, by Chairman Palmer, I have worked on PFAS issues. I've worked on super fund issues, both enforcing super fund, working in EPA's office enforcement, managing the super fund program while working in EPA's, what is now the office of land and emergency management, but also, and for the longest period of time, actually working on the Hill. I was here working in the transportation infrastructure committee back in the nineties when Congress was trying to do Superfund reform, and we were working closely with the energy and commerce committee because this committee shared jurisdiction, trying to make the program more fair, because it is well known that Superfund is a very draconian statute that sweeps in a lot of parties, including parties that I've heard members on both sides of the aisle say, you know, should not be held liable. And it's with that background and knowledge base that I come here to talk to you today.
My goal is to help the committee, the subcommittee understand what are the implications, and to offer some considerations if you can as you consider a response. So in my written testimony, and I'll summarize, it makes five points. I mean, the first is that the super fund liability system, it's not about polluter pays, it's about it ensnares parties with little to no responsibility for contamination. It is a way to expeditiously, it's a way to get cleanup done, but it is not based on causation. It's not based on who is actually responsible.
I've heard ranking member Taco talk about people who didn't produce or use it. I heard Congressman Menendez talk about people who caused contamination and characterize those people as polluters. The statute sweeps in far more people than the entities that you just described as ones you would like to keep liable. And in doing so, it creates enormous transaction costs. And I go into too much detail, I'm sure, in my written statement about those costs and various entities like GAO, RAND Corporation, etcetera, who have quantified those costs.
This is not cost spent on the cleanup. This is cost spent on lawyers fighting about liability. The consequences for PFO and PFAS are different. I've heard the same statements from environmental groups saying, why is this any different from other hazardous substances? The EPA can manage that, the courts can manage that.
The reason it's different is because PFAS, PFOA and PFOS are ubiquitous in the environment. And when you add that to the fact that EPA back in 2024 put out two risk assessments that said that basically if you can detect it, there's a risk. So there are these risk assessments out there. They're not risk management tools. They're simply just a risk assessment saying, you know, that incredibly low levels may be risky.
Now my testimony talks about that as well, you know, whether or not those incredibly low levels are accurate or whether there should be higher levels. Nonetheless, just know that because of those incredible levels and the fact that it's found everywhere, the designation of pifoprofos creates a different situation than you might find with other hazardous substances, even those that are ubiquitous. I mean, lead is ubiquitous. But lead, we have levels that we know our management levels, levels that you would clean up. I also wanna address, I've heard members say, well, isn't EPA's enforcement discretion the answer to everything?
And the answer is no, because it only applies to EPA itself. And, because of some of the data, I began back working on super fund for years, EPA only brings about a third of the cases. And so the vast majority of litigation out there is brought by parties other than the EPA. Congress also has a long history of codifying and creating exemptions based on the EPA's enforcement discretion. So I would encourage you, and I talk about this in my testimony, to look at EPA's enforcement discretion, equitable principles, and decide, you know, do you agree with those and would you wanna codify that?
And then finally, and I know I'm out of town now, you don't wanna create an unfair situation where somebody's left off is off the hook and someone downstream is a victim. That's what the trust fund is for. And I put numbers in my written testimony about what the levels of the super fund trust fund are and the fact that that money is available to EPA to do cleanup to address situations where you have identified a real risk. Thank you very much. I'll be happy to answer questions.
Speaker 6
Thank you, mister chairman, and thank you also, ranking member Tonko, for inviting us to testify. Thank you again for inviting us to address the committee. The AWWA is made up of 43,000 individual members and, excuse me, 50,000 individual members representing many disciplines from finance, engineering, science, advocates, everyone, anyone involved either with the utility, water utility sector or are supporting that sector. 80% of the population of North America is served by our membership. We include also among our membership of the water utilities also, as many of those are combined systems, wastewater about 40%, do both wastewater and drinking water.
Some do stormwater, too. Anyway, we appreciate this invitation. This issue of PFAS is, of course, a challenging one. And, I appreciated the overview of some of the legal points that Susan Bodine made. We do not, our utility members do not, as was pointed out by the chairman, manufacture, use, or profit from PFAS.
And in fact, pursuant to the new regulations that EPA has promulgated, we're investing literally billions of dollars. And that is not an exaggeration because you need to include not just the capital investments, but the ongoing O and M costs that honestly run in perpetuity in many cases, or at least as long as there's potency in the chemistry. Paradoxically, these robust investments that utilities are making create the possible liability under circular, our super fund, as Susan noted. We use technologies that have been approved by EPA. Granular activated carbon, which can be reactivated and replenished, eventually has to be disposed of. Also, ion exchange and reverse osmosis.
All of these best available technologies generate residuals, which is the waste product from the treatment. On the wastewater side, they're called biosolids, and they use different technologies. But, again, these are massive waste streams, and a lot of it has been land applied or sent to municipal landfills. But now with the nature of a persistent bio... Well, persistent toxic like the PFAS compounds, you concentrate the toxicity, and then we have to manage and dispose these residuals in light of the super fund designation as a hazardous substance.
So instead of going to a municipal landfill, you might wanna be looking now at a RICRS certified landfill or an incinerator, but other options are gonna be there, you're gonna have more expense and fewer options. And, again, not only is super fund strict joint and several, it is retroactive liability. And so, you could have a super fund site that is the result of decades of previous, what was previously legal disposal practices. Again, as Susan eloquently described, it has a wide liability net. She used the term draconian.
It's a term I might also approve of. Again, strict joint, civil, and retroactive liability. And while the intent of CERCLA was to hold polluters responsible, polluter pays principle, with the ability of a potentially responsible party, and there's many of those out there, and there's four different categories in section 107. You can check the briefing paper you got. There's at least two, maybe three opportunities for utilities to be swept up in the liability net brought in not necessarily by EPA, who's always avoided bringing in municipalities, but other potential responsible parties.
And there are examples of that. Well, I’ll go into that later if you have questions. So let us just say that we approved the statement recently by EPA administrator Zelden that EPA will need new statutory authority and language from Congress to fully address the equitable concerns of passive receiver liability. And we would urge Congress to, at least this committee and the other members of Congress, to take a careful look at some of the legislation that's been proposed, and on the House side in particular, specifically the HR 1267, the water systems, the FAS liability act, which we think is a reasonable approach. Maybe not the only one, but one worth taking a look at.
There are many other things to say about this issue.
Speaker 7
Thank you all for the opportunity to testify. My name is Emily Donovan, and I'm cofounder of Clean Cape Fear, a grassroots community group based in Wilmington, North Carolina, and I serve on the leadership team of the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, representing more than 42 community groups in 26 states. Today, I am here on behalf of half a million people in Southeastern North Carolina who are living with extreme PFAS contamination in our air, soil, drinking water, food supply, and now even sea foam along our beaches. This is not a hypothetical risk. It is our daily reality.
I testified before this very committee seven years ago. I explained in great detail what happened to my area known for its pristine beaches and beautiful waterways. DuPont and Chemours used the Cape Fear region as a PFAS sacrifice zone for nearly half a century without our knowledge or consent. Our contamination crisis was so bad the United Nations Human Rights Council investigated our area and called out DuPont, Comoros, federal, and state regulators for failing to stop business-related human rights abuses. Eight years ago, we learned that Gen X and other PFAS were present at extreme levels in the tap water.
There were no regulations, no monitoring mechanisms, nothing to warn us. We immediately realized we were not alone. Other communities just like ours were also dealing with similar devastation. So we partnered with them and flew to DC regularly to demand the EPA establish the first ever federal drinking water standards for PFAS and make sure the polluter paid for the cleanup. Now we are watching those protections get weakened by this new administration.
We fought hard for those federal drinking water standards because we learned without enforceable standards, our public utilities could look us, the rate payers, in the eyes and legally say that tap water meets or exceeds all state and federal guidelines because there were no state and federal guidelines. At the time, it felt like our local leaders were more concerned with municipal liabilities and the economy in very vague terms, rather than protecting our public health. Wilmington's water utility knew it had a PFAS problem for a full year before the public became aware. While Camores is by far my community's biggest PFAS polluter, there is significant PFAS pollution from a bunch of textile companies upriver from Camores. Unfortunately, we constantly hear stories about how PFAS polluters are important employers in our town, often gaining outsized influence over the town's water system.
So much so, like Burlington, North Carolina, failed to hold themselves internally accountable for pretreatment programs. We've witnessed too often, especially in small towns, the water utilities often function as industry and developer paradises, instead of true stewards of public health. I'm hearing a lot of people talking about how costly cleanup for PFOA and PFOS will be, but no one is remotely talking about an immediate moratorium or ban on all PFAS because the cleanup and liability are so costly. I believe lawmakers and regulators have not done enough. The entire class of PFAS should be designated as hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Last month, new research confirmed that short chain PFAS like Gen X are now dominant in municipal wastewater streams. Yet here we are debating whether to weaken accountability for two PFAS that haven't been in commercial use for over a decade. We have a true public health problem that no one in this room created, but all of us are required to solve. In the eight years I have been coming to DC begging for solutions, I have never seen the water utility lobby groups stand beside us, demanding better source protections. We are already paying for this cleanup.
I raised my children on this water because I thought it was good for them, because water should be good for children. I watched my husband survive a brain tumor. I also buried friends my age who shared their illnesses with me in this very room seven years ago. Some of us don't have the luxury of time to keep redirecting the focus away from real solutions. Please do not let Tom, Amy, Chris, and Sarah die in vain.
Please consider those who are already paying the ultimate price. Families like my friend Kara Keenan, who is watching right now. She's a decorated veteran and a young breast cancer survivor. Her mom, Margaret, has a rare blood cancer with no cure, that has progressed. Her stepdad, Bob, had bladder cancer, and his leukemia recently progressed, requiring treatment twice a week at a facility two hours from home.
No one in their small, tight-knit family was genetically predisposed or had prior medical histories. The only thing they all shared in common was a ZIP code in a severely PFAS-contaminated community. Please don't allow their suffering to be in vain. If time allows, I will say this. My faith teaches me that we are called to be good stewards over all of God's creation.
When we fail to do this, we are actively breaking our covenant relationship with God. The best time to solve this PFAS crisis was 50 years ago, but the second best time is right now. Do not weaken circular. Do not grant exemptions or permit shields. Stand with PFAS-contaminated communities.
Stand with my community. You have the power to protect human life. Please use it. Thank you.
Speaker 8
Chairman Guthrie, subcommittee chairman Palmer, ranking member Palon, subcommittee ranking member Taco, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Lawrence Falby. I'm a principal at the international law firm Miller Canfield in Chicago. I've been an environmental attorney in private practice for over 30 years.
I'm appearing today as chair of the International Council of Shopping Centers' environmental policy and land use subcommittee. The testimony and viewpoints discussed today are my own and not attributable to my law firm or our clients. ICSE represents owners, developers, lenders, and operators of retail and mixed-use properties that anchor local economies in every congressional district. For the past several years, our committee has focused on the growing challenges that PFAS pose to commercial real estate, redevelopment, and community reinvestment. PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a large class of chemicals that have been used widely for decades because of their unique properties.
Those properties also make them persistent in the environment and extraordinarily difficult and expensive to remediate and to investigate. Today, PFAS are considered harmful at extremely low levels, down to parts per trillion, and they are now detectable almost everywhere. In 2024, EPA finalized its decision to designate two PFAS compounds, PFOA and PFOS, as hazardous substances under CERCLA, also known as Superfund. From a commercial real estate perspective, the impact has been immediate and showing. Circle is a strict joint and several retroactive liability statute.
It was designed to make polluters pay for legacy contamination at significantly contaminated sites, like Love Canal. But when that framework is applied to chemicals that are ubiquitous, migrate easily, are deemed harmful at minute levels, and often detected without a clear on-site source, the result is that passive property owners who did nothing to cause contamination are ensnared by circular liability. The problem is compounded during real estate transactions. Environmental due diligence typically begins with a Phase One environmental site assessment. Now that PFOA and PFOS are considered circular hazardous substances, their potential presence must be evaluated.
If PFAS is identified as a recognized environmental condition, a deal can stall or die even before sampling begins. Buyers, sellers, lenders, and insurers fear that investigation and remediation costs could exceed the value of the property itself, particularly when cleanup standards are inconsistent or undefined. The result is frozen redevelopment, stalled projects, and ballooning costs, especially on brownfield and infill sites the communities want redeveloped. EPA acknowledged this risk in its non-binding PFAS enforcement discretion policy. In that policy, EPA states it does not intend to pursue enforcement against certain secondary parties.
The policy does not protect property owners from third-party contribution lawsuits. It does not provide certainty to the markets. Existing circular defenses, including the bona fide purchaser defense, also fall short. BFPP protections are complex, uncertain, self-certifying, and easily lost. Many longtime property owners are categorically ineligible, and no owner ever knows whether the defense will succeed until tested in litigation, years later and at great expense.
ICSE supports science-based PFAS regulations, protection of drinking water, and holding true polluters accountable. What we do not support is a system that discourages investment and places unlimited liability on parties that did not release PFAS. Inconsistent approaches to PFAS continue to hobble and confuse longtime successful EPA programs like the Brownfield program because of EPA's recent announcement on Brownfield applicants certifying their lack of liability for PFAS on brownfield sites. This causes even more uncertainty in a program that's relied upon by the commercial real estate sector. ICSE asked Congress to reaffirm three simple principles. First, polluters should pay, not passive landowners.
Stock and clean drinking water must be protected. Third, brownfields and infill redevelopment, particularly housing, should be encouraged, not penalized. To achieve those goals, we recommend Congress create statutory circular liability protection for passive receivers. There is clear precedent in circular, including the secured creditor exemption, for narrowly tailored protections that preserve accountability and market certainty. ICSE and its members stand ready to work with Congress, EPA, states, and communities to remediate PFAS responsibly and protect public health without undermining the redevelopment that fuels local jobs, tax bases, and housing supply.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to answering your questions. I ask that my statement and testimony be included in the record, and I yield back by 10 seconds.
Speaker 1
I thank the witnesses for their testimony. The chair now recognizes the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Guthrie, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the recognition. So, Meehan, as we have heard today, the super fund law is based on the polluter pays principle, but the law may be a bad fit for dealing with PFAS contamination. Can you speak to how drinking water utilities remove PFAS chemicals? And are ratepayers at risk of having to pay increased rates because of the cost of super fund litigation stemming from the EPA designation of PFAS and PFOA as hazardous substances?
Speaker 6
Thank you. Clearly, at least according to our lights, the costs are very great in terms of treating and disposing of PFAS, and getting it out of the water system. I'll give you just a concrete example. Fairfax water right across the river has got is levels at five parts per trillion. The standard's four parts per trillion.
For them to get down from five parts per trillion to four parts per trillion, they're gonna spend $400,000,000 on capital investment. And beyond that, and this is a point I made earlier, 18% of their ongoing O and M costs are gonna be consumed running and maintaining that system. That's one anecdote. But, our analysis basically and I don't wanna beat this to death, but, you know, we view the cost at about triple what EPA did. And so, whether you buy EPA's number, our number, they're gonna be huge, and the impact's even gonna be greater to smaller system.
Fairfax Water is a fairly well-off, well-heeled system and a well-run one. They'll get through it, and they'll handle it. So the.
Speaker 3
Cost are gonna be well, what's the cost-benefit? Are the benefits gonna be huge too? I'm sorry? Are the benefits marginal, or they're gonna be, I mean, if you're gonna pay more, but you're gonna get a far better product, or the benefits marginal anyway?
Speaker 6
Well, in terms of, again, getting into our, we did 85 pages of comments. But if you wanna get into the benefit cost analysis, we thought that four parts per trillion didn't meet a positive benefit cost ratio. We think when you get around 10 parts per trillion, you're okay, at least in benefit-cost. And you can argue. And then you look at the international comparisons, a wide variety of standards.
So, what's the intelligible principle by which you set the standard? We think benefit cost?
Speaker 3
So you're saying you're far more money than going from 10 to four parts per trillion. Yeah. It costs far more than the, so let me go to, it's huge. Miss Bodine, in your testimony, you discussed how the super fund trust must be available to help clean up the sites contaminated by PFAS. What is the significance that EPA designated these two specific PFAS chemicals out of the thousands of PFAS chemicals as hazardous substances?
And does this mean that all PFAS are a danger to public health and environment? I don't know, I read that fast.
Speaker 5
Couple of questions there. So, under without the Superfund designation, without saying that PFOA and PFAS are hazardous substances, EPA still has the authority to address releases of PFOA and PFAS using their own funding, using the Superfund trust fund dollars because they consider them pollutants and contaminants. And EPA is allowed to say, we think this pollutant and contaminant presents an imminent, substantial danger in this situation, and therefore we're gonna use our own money, come in, and address it. EPA hasn't been doing that, but they have the authority. By listing it, then EPA can sue people instead, or to the point of the other witnesses, other people can then bring lawsuits also.
And, I'm sorry, the second half of your question?
Speaker 3
I wanna switch to one more. So, thanks. So, mister Fowley, in your testimony, you talked about EPA enforcement discretion policy, and super fund defenses did not adequately address concerns property developers may have. So in my area, we have data centers and things that are coming, and people are really, really concerned and fairly about good farmland being used up for this. And so the sites are industrial sites, if we but we gotta make sure they're safe.
We gotta make sure they're clean. We gotta make sure people can use them. But how could Congress improve the liability defenses in the existing Superfund law to address these concerns, so these kinds of brownfield sites can be developed?
Speaker 8
Yes. Thank you for the question, Chairman Guthrie. I think as I've testified, what we're looking for is a passive receiver exception that addresses people or entities that did not pollute using PFAS. Simply owning property under Circle at this point for PFOS and PFOA, as Circle has its substances, invokes that liability. And the reason why the enforcement discretion policy and some of the existing defenses in Circle are not sufficient is because, for the enforcement discretion policies, as was already mentioned, it is only applicable to EPA.
It does not, barring third party liability lawsuits, and that causes uncertainty in the marketplace. And that makes it very difficult for redevelopment to occur. With the bona fide perspective purchaser defense, there are other issues with that. There has to be a transaction involved. You have to have bought the property after 01/11/2002, which is when the BFPP came into existence.
Speaker 3
My time has expired, though. So, I appreciate your answer. We'll get more of it later, and I will yield back to my friend from Alabama.
Speaker 1
Gentleman yields. Chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Tonko, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Miss Donovan, once again, welcome back to the subcommittee. I appreciate your passionate appeal to this group. I don't expect you to have followed all of our activities since you last testified, but one issue that has been coming up recently is the discussion around reauthorizing TASCA. Now there are industry groups that have been critical of how the Lautenberg Act changed TASCA's new chemicals program.
They argue that long delays in regulatory hurdles are disincentivizing innovative new chemicals from coming onto the market, and supplanting much more dangerous chemicals already in use. I think what has happened to you and your community is an important cautionary tale that we cannot just assume that a new chemical replacing an existing known to be a harmful chemical will truly protect Americans. So, Miss Donovan, can you please explain what is Gen X, and how is it different than PFOA and PFOS, which are the older long-chain PFAS?
Speaker 7
Sure. Thank you for that question. So Gen X is the commercial replacement for PFOA that DuPont developed. And when it was tested, it showed to be nearly as toxic as PFOA. So the EPA said you can make it, but you can't release it into the environment.
The reason why we ended up having extreme levels of Gen X in our tap water is because it was released as a byproduct. Clearly, these chemistries are messy and are ending up everywhere. Not only are we dealing with the legacy contamination from PFOA and PFOS that are no longer in commercial use, but now we have all of these new PFAS, 14,000, per the EPA. There was over 256 unknown PFAS in the waste streams of Comores that was being dumped into my drinking water supply. But I really want to point out, everything that I'm hearing today, especially related to tosca, is, I have no idea why in the world we are allowing new uses for a class of chemicals that we don't have any proven safe disposal method for.
This is like banning lead paint, but then allowing lead-laced crayons onto the market. It makes no sense. We are not solving this problem correctly. We are not talking about source control and banning and eliminating, like other countries are doing right now. Europe has realized that the only way to affordably get out of this crisis is to move away from this chemistry.
And the important thing that did not happen with Gen X is that we did not find a green chemistry solution. And that's one thing that Congress could do. Congress could demand that any substitute to a known toxic chemical must meet green chemistry principles before they're ever allowed to make it into the market, and be a viable substitute. Because when we if we're gonna talk about the ability to have new retail space, we need to make sure that we actually have a workforce that can show up to work, not sick, or that can actually even afford to go shopping. Because like my friend Kara, she's spending 2 days a week driving four hours just to get treatment for her stepdad.
That is not a quality of life, and those are not resources that she's able to go shopping with.
Speaker 2
So I think it is fair to characterize the prevailing belief that shorter chain PFAS present a lower risk than long chain PFAS, but safer doesn't mean safe. Can you talk a little bit more about the consequences you have seen in your community due to gun exposure?
Speaker 7
Well, everything that I'm hearing about Gen X, and, again, I am not a scientific expert on this, so you can fact-check me. But everything that I'm hearing from the scientists is saying that Gen X is now turning out to be just as toxic. The only difference is Gen X doesn't bioaccumulate in the body nearly as much as PFOA did. So, you know, we have to really understand toxicity. Just because it doesn't bioaccumulate, doesn't mean it's harmful.
If you go out and drink every night over a decade or a lifetime, you're gonna start to see some health effects, even though the alcohol leaves your system in the matter of hours. We have strong regulations on pharmaceutical drugs. We have no regulations on these chemistries and the fact that they're sitting in our bodies for days and weeks. There is new research that just came out on ultra short-chain PFAS showing up in the blood of Wilmington residents at the peak of our exposure. This is a massive problem that requires a class based solution.
We are not talking about the current problem, the 21st century problem. We are talking about a decades old problem.
Speaker 2
Well, today, industry groups may suggest that we could develop a chemical safer than Gen X if only manufacturers were not hampered by overly burdensome upfront reviews. So similarly, some people are calling for an expedited TSCA approval process for new chemicals that may be important for building data centers, processing critical minerals, and other national priorities. So, again, I appreciate your appearing before us today, and yield back, mister chair.
Speaker 1
Gentleman yields. I now recognize myself for five minutes of questions. Mister Mien, in your written testimony, you state that CERCLA was not designed for chemicals like UFA or PFOS. I'd like for you to explain that a little bit, but I also wanna know, are there other laws already on the books that are better for addressing these?
Speaker 6
Well, I think the ubiquity issue that Susan Bodine mentioned is really key. It is omnipresent. And, again, the way the standard at the standard that's being set, at least for the MCL under the safe drinking water act at 4 parts per trillion, that will drive super fun cleanup standards. So when you add the MCL with the ubiquity, I think you've got a real problem. And, of course, the range of potentially responsible parties is just gonna explode, including water and wastewater utilities.
So I think that that's sort of the key, reality that we we're facing in our sector. As to other laws, I do agree with Miss Donovan that we need to look at source water protection at a strategic level, not just the Safe Drinking Water Act, which is at the end of the pipe and puts all the burden on the rate payers and the citizens of those communities. We need to the Lautenberg bill actually contemplated looking at drinking water effects in the review of chemicals, and we've seen very little of that effort in that office. We don't we could have effluent guidelines under the Clean Water Act targeting producers of PEFASK compounds. We're not seeing any action on that front.
So I think there are other tools in the toolbox besides the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Speaker 1
When you talk about an affordability crisis in the country, that covers practically everything we're using right now. How will circle a designation impact affordability for water utilities and their customers?
Speaker 6
Well, there are four categories of potentially responsible parties. And as I say, I think it's fair to say at least two of them will touch water and wastewater utilities, maybe even three depending on circumstances. So once you get dragged into litigation, you have several factors that come to bear. The underlying liability, which might be small, but you certainly have the litigation costs, which can run for years and go into millions of dollars. And then you have, and a lot of people underestimate this, the reputational risk.
A utility, a water utility, is a customer-facing entity dependent, not almost 98%. I'll make up that number.
Speaker 1
You don't disagree that we need to make the investments to make sure our water is.
Speaker 6
is Sure. But I'm talking about the cost of the super fund, designation, and being dragged into litigation as a PRP. That's all. You're right. Absolutely.
On the costs are immense on just complying with the MCLs and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Speaker 1
Mister Falabi, given your experience with Circula and with transactions involving properties with contamination concerns, part of the issue here is how it impacts communities, the surrounding communities, the opportunity for better paying jobs for new jobs. And to his point about reputational problems, how does that impact the ability to develop a site that could get a business there, provide a better job for people, better health care, better income? Yeah. So the development community, markets, and lenders hate uncertainty. And what?
Speaker 8
The PFAS, PFOA, or the PFOA PFOS designation does is it injects that uncertainty into the market because the cleanup standards are not well defined. They're inconsistent from state to state, and it will be the chemical that's ubiquitous in the environment, finding the proper actual source is very difficult. So, for cleanups of property to be accomplished, trying to investigate where that PFAS came from is extremely expensive. And given that it's ubiquitous in the environment and deemed hazardous at very, my new cleanup levels, it implicates a lot of liability.
Speaker 1
Miss Bodin, you in your written testimony, you talked about the draconian nature of circle liability and the transaction costs associated with resolving these. That extends to potentially someone who would buy property that the EPA had deemed clean. If they discovered something else on that property, they would be subject to a massive lawsuit. Is that correct?
Speaker 5
That's correct. It, yeah. EPA can give somebody a comfort letter, say, a property is clean, and, no, it doesn't matter. You could sell the property, and the subsequent property owner could then turn around and see you and say no. I don't think I'm gonna spend money to do more cleanup.
I don't think it's clean enough.
Speaker 1
I'll now yield back and recognize the gentleman from Illinois, Miss Shakowski, for five minutes for her questions.
Speaker 10
Well, I just want to say to you as our activist. As the person who has been working on this issue, how many years? I can't hear. Eight years. Eight years?
And has anything really changed in that time?
Speaker 7
We've seen small improvements, but they were all self-funded, self-paid. We, our utilities, invested. I was really shocked to hear that it's gonna cost a community $400,000,000 because combined, in Wilmington and Brunswick County, for us to upgrade a massive PFAS contamination problem. Brunswick County is looking at 167,000,000, and Wilmington looked at 43,000,000 with ongoing kind of recurring maintenance costs. But a lot of that is dictated by the pollution upstream of us.
If that pollution was removed, then the cost to treat our water would go down.
Speaker 10
Well, I just wanna thank you for your continuing to work on this as pretty much a regular citizen. And it seems to me that more, a whole lot more, needs to be done. But what I wanted to ask you is that how are we going to help children the most? Although it's not only for children. Right?
You were talking about other family members and friends who are affected. But what can we do to help you, at the very least, to help the children?
Speaker 7
Quite honestly, I don't see these permit shields and weakening CERCLA as a path forward that's gonna help any of us. What we need are stronger policies. We need, like I said, the Resource Conservation, Recovery Act, RCRA, to have all PFAS listed as a class under that as hazardous waste. That then unlocks a whole suite of resources that could be at the disposal of local, state, and federal governments. I think it is misguided for us to continue to have a conversation about who is blamed.
This is a problem that none of us created, and it's gonna be really hard to get out of it. But we're already putting my children's life on the line. You know, when we talk about uncertainty factors, it is devastating to be told that you have a cancer that no one has treatment for, but you got maybe two years left to live. And that's what Kara's mom is dealing with. That is an uncertainty factor that is soul-shattering.
I think at this point, I would really appreciate if Congress could look at banning PFAS as a class, making sure that the replacements are rooted in green chemistry, and ensure that the polluters pay. Because right now we are self-paying for the cleanup. We don't want this in our water. We did demand that our utilities make the investments to clean it up. And you think we need to also pay attention that some of these utilities, like my utility in Brunswick County, hadn't had a major upgrade since the 1980s.
It was time for them to upgrade their infrastructure. They were working in twentieth century technology, but we're in a twenty-first century environment with twenty-first century chemicals. It is time for us to make sure that we are treating water as sacred.
Speaker 10
It is because it is a basic need, it is a human right, and we need to stop allowing business-related human rights abuses to occur. So are pretty wealthy companies like DuPont involved in your community?
Speaker 7
They're involved heavily upstream. They employ, they're a significant employer. They employ about 500 workers. And the problem that we're seeing is that these workers are dealing with double exposure. They have the potential for contaminated groundwater if they're on private wells or they're having the issue with public water supplies also being contaminated, while going into a work environment that is not necessarily putting the needs of them over the needs of the product.
You know, some things that I've heard workers joke about is that they're given clean suits, but it's not necessarily to protect them. It's to protect the product. And this needs to be a shift, a cultural change. If we're going to play with the devil because that's exactly what this chemistry is, the fact that it lives forever, we're playing god here with these things, and we're not treating them with the care that they need to be treated with, and understanding that this is a very dangerous proposition to be using this chemistry.
Speaker 10
In terms of the children, do we have any particular efforts to be able to protect our kids?
Speaker 7
No. Women bury the carry an incredible body burden related to PFAS. And, in fact, babies are being born contaminated. Breast milk is contaminated. I have had women call me and ask me how to put filters inside their houses just to try and create a protective bubble for themselves because they are terrified of increasing their exposure.
Speaker 7
Yes. Their effort inside their home. And it’s nearly impossible. That's the one thing that we've learned is that sometimes cameras will pay for a utility, sorry, a filter under the sink, but they won't put one on a shower. We have backyard gardens that are contaminated with PFAS right now.
Coming from Camors, we can trace back the signature of PFAS that's being released in the air.
Speaker 10
Are you clicking on me? Because we're done. Okay. Well, I'm gonna yield back. But let me just say one thing as an activist myself.
You are doing everything you can, but the result is too small right now, and we have to fight. I mean, all the people need to understand that our kids are at risk right now. Thank you. I yield back.
Speaker 1
The gentlewoman yields. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mister Ladder, for five minutes for his
Speaker 11
Mister chairman, and thank you to who are witnesses for being here with us today. EPA issued an 04/19/2024 memorandum entitled PFAS enforcement discretion settlement policy. Under the memorandum, EPA does not intend to pursue entities where equitable factors do not support seeking response actions or costs under circular. EPA explained in its memo that its enforcement discretion policies provide protection where circumstances warrant, narrow the scope of liability and focus on the significant contributors to contamination at a particular site. Miss Bodine, given your previous role as the assistant administrator for EPA's office of enforcement and compliance, are there any challenges to using the enforcement discretion guidance or memos in the context of circular or PFAS contamination?
Speaker 5
Yes. Thank you for the question, Congressman. The policy is just that. It's a policy, and it applies only to the EPA. So EPA enforcement, which I explained earlier, is about a third of the cases that are brought under the Superfund statute.
It has no implication. It does not restrain anyone else from suing, whether it's a state, whether it's a prior landowner, whether it's a neighbor. Any third party can still sue. So EPA and its policy can say, we think based on equitable factors that these entities should not be held liable. All they can do is refrain from taking action themselves.
They can't stop anybody else from doing it unless on a case by case basis they enter into a settlement agreement with that party and then give them contribution protection, which is what EPA enforcement office was doing before congress enacted the Brownfields bill and provided liability protection for bona fide prospective purchasers. EPA was killing themselves trying to enter into the settlement agreement to provide protection from Superfund Liability on a case-by-case basis. And when the law was passed, the enforcement office put out a memo saying, this is really going to save us a lot of transaction costs.
Speaker 11
Let me follow up with you. What options would water utilities have if a liable party brought them into a third-party contribution claim, given the EPA enforcement discretion does not protect utilities from circular liability in that scenario?
Speaker 5
In that scenario, I would say that other than fighting it, the only option they have is to go to the EPA and say, sue me, settle with me, and give me some contribution protection through the context of that settlement.
Speaker 11
Thank you. Mister Meehan, how do we ensure these communities are not unfairly impacted by the cost of PFAS remediation? What role should passive receiver exemptions play in this effort?
Speaker 6
I don't know how we insulate the ratepayers on the cost of all this. In fact, the ratepayers are gonna be the primary burden carrier for the cost of regulations, super fund liability, litigation, reputational risk. I wish I could come up with a better answer, but that's the grim reality if I understand your question. Yeah.
Speaker 11
Okay. Thank you. Miss Bodine, in the absence of a passive receiver exemption, do you see a risk that PFAS manufacturers or other primary contributors could use circular contribution actions to redirect liability toward publicly owned utilities with a stable rate base?
Speaker 5
That's how the statute works. Yes. Exactly. EPA can target, and generally, they only target a handful of entities, and those entities then turn around and sue everybody else that they can find.
Speaker 6
Yes. Congressman, you know, there are a couple of law professors out in California, Buzz Thompson at Stanford and Jim Saltzman at UCLA Law. They've reported that there were 600 cases where the municipality was brought into super fund litigation by another potentially responsible party. Those are probably mostly landfill cases, and, actually, Congress dealt with some of those liability concerns in new exemptions and defenses. So there is precedent in New Jersey.
The wastewater system, Passaic Valley, they were sued by EPA to try and get them out of liability through one of these consent decrees. The other potentially responsible party who I will remain keep nameless has sued, has kept them in the litigation for another ten years with multiple lawsuits. So the idea that this is a good faith effort by EPA, this enforcement discretion memo. But as Susan said, it's not going to cut the mustard.
Speaker 11
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. My time has expired, and I yield back.
Speaker 1
Chair, I now recognize the gentleman from California, mister Peters, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 12
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So EPA has designated these chemicals as hazardous under CERCLA, and the Trump administration has defended that designation despite a clear aversion to regulation. And there's no debate that these substances are truly harmful, and Miss Donovan makes some excellent points, but I wanna level set about what we're talking about here. We should be dealing with these chemicals upstream, and I think it's Tosca, maybe it's Rick Whart. Both of those laws are in the jurisdiction of this committee, and we should deal with that.
We also have people should understand that the drinking water you get in your house is regulated by the safe drinking water act. That should set the right level of toxicity to protect people who get drinking water. Mister Means pointed out, it shouldn't be all done at the end of the pipe. It's not fair for municipal water facilities to have to deal with this on their own, and it's extremely expensive. And what I think is that we should really concentrate on solving this problem upstream and to the extent we have to through the safe drinking water act, but that's where we need to point the gun.
And that's not what we're talking about today with this innocent receivers exception under CERCLA. That's different. Okay? My concern would be here that the EPA has already recognized this. They've said they're not gonna pursue entities where equitable factors do not support seeking response actions or costs under circular, including farmers, municipal landfills, water utilities, municipal airports, and local fire departments.
But that does not keep third parties from suing just to get these people into the money pot, costing our ratepayers money without any environmental benefit. So that's why I'm open to this exception. I don't wanna I wanna I think our ratepayers are already burdened appropriately to some extent with having to clean this material up to meet the requirements of the safe drinking water act. But there's no benefit from putting them into this pot for circular liability when no one suggests these are the polluters. The polluters are not the municipal water facilities.
Okay? And, mister Falbe, I think that's pretty clear here. I think we should work toward a reasonable exemption under this law. Circle has been amended a number of times because we've recognized over the decades the very, very strict, I don't wanna say draconian, but very strict in punishing liability. And a lot of people pay money into just legal fees over long periods of time.
I think that the law has had a really good effect prospectively because it scared the bejesus out of people about emitting hazardous substances in the environment because they know this liability. Right? But it's retroactive, and I've been part of lawsuits. I cut my teeth on some of the biggest first cleanups in the Midwest. And everyone was in the pot, and I have felt that sympathy for them.
But going forward, let's not penalize people who aren't polluters. And I'm particularly concerned about municipal rates, as municipal water systems have to charge their ratepayers for this. So if we don't get a benefit from it, let's not do it. Mister Falabi, there's also instances in the private sector where this is happening too, where you take minimally contaminated sites, and then they can't be developed. And I know you have a situation with a data center.
Can you describe the situation there for us?
Speaker 8
Yeah. Thank you, congressman. So the issue of the data center, we have a piece of property. One of our members under my committee has acquired a piece of property that was a former industrial facility, didn't use PFOS, didn't use PFOA, was a chlorinated solvent site. That site was cleaned up.
There was a no further remediation letter issued, as we call it in Illinois, and that is a prime site for redevelopment. They've been shopping it around to data center redevelopers. They even went so far as to get a phase one environmental site assessment done that actually said that, look, we have no reason to suspect any type of PFAS was used in this manufacturing facility. So you have a closure letter, you have a clean phase one, and yet when they took it to market, one developer in particular said, well, we don't really believe that phase one, we want to test for these substances. Now you might say, well, go ahead and test.
The problem is because PFAS is so ubiquitous in the environment, the chances of finding it coming from somewhere at these very minute levels may, you know, impact that deal. And the contract purchaser may walk away from this and even forfeit their earnest money because of the unmarketability of the property. And the reason he wants it,
Speaker 12
Were you trying to use this for a data center where almost no one will be there? There will be almost no exposure. It's probably a good site for that. And this is the nature of the exception we did in brownfields. We said, oh my gosh.
This is where preventing we saw the circle was preventing all these sites from being developed, in an irrational way. That's why we created a new law for brownfields. We need to do something about these passive receivers, and I look forward to working with you all and yield back.
Speaker 1
Gentleman yields. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Doctor Joyce, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 14
Thank you, Chairman Palmer and Ranking Member Tonko, for holding this important hearing, to our panel for being here today to testify. Circle was established to hold polluters liable for the cleanup of chemical contamination that they caused. This polluter pays liability framework is helpful in many instances where there is a need for expensive environmental cleanups, so that the party that generated or released a hazardous substance can be held responsible for the associated costs. However, the liability established by CERCLA does not stop with the polluters. Under the statute's liability framework, any person who has incurred costs related to the remediation of hazardous substances can file suit against not just polluters, but so-called passive receivers.
These passive receivers are not involved in the initial generation or discharge of hazardous chemicals, but might receive water, soil, or other materials containing such substances. Given how common the use of PFAS is, the 2024 final rule designating two PFAS chemistries as hazardous substances creates a system where many passive receivers will be drawn into costly legal proceedings for contamination that they bear little or absolutely no responsibility for having created. I would like to focus on some of the defenses to civil liability outlined in the statute and whether these are sufficient to protect the passive receivers in the context of these two aforementioned PFAS designations. Mister Falabha, I want to talk first about the bona fide prospective purchaser defense. A party that purchases land that they know or have reason to know is contaminated can invoke this defense if they meet certain statutory criteria and ongoing obligations.
Would you please give a brief overview of the statutory defense and how it works?
Speaker 8
Yes. Certainly. So the bona fide perspective purchaser defense is a fairly recent innovation for Circle. It was included in the Brownfield amendments of 2002. So, you know, as Circle has lived with us for 45 years.
Circle has evolved, and the BFPP is one of the new defenses that was inserted into Circle. So under the BFPP, an owner or a new buyer of property can do an investigation of phase one environmental site assessment, identify contamination, but yet then have a shield for circular liability if certain criteria are met. One is to do all appropriate inquiry, which is usually a phase one environmental site assessment. Then, though, you have to when you get the property, you have to have continuing obligations. You can't just sit there if there's a problem, if there's a release, you actually have to address that.
So this defense can be lost. It's also self-certifying, which means EPA is not involved. So a BFPP or would-be BFPP doesn't actually know they have maintained that defense until it's tested in litigation. So because EPA is not involved until you get a certificate, like, with a state closure. It has a lot of uncertainty to it.
And it.
Speaker 14
Won't you outline any needed improvements for this defense, such as EPA providing more certainty to the parties so that they can assert this defense? And finally, in your opinion, are statutory changes needed?
Speaker 8
Yes. I think there is an avenue for strengthening the BFPP. The reason it was deemed self-certifying in the beginning was to try to get EPA out of the way so you didn't have to wait for EPA to oversee a site. The problem with that is you have no regulatory authority that sort of blesses the cleanup. There's nobody to say yes.
You've done a good job. That's what happens on the state voluntary cleanup programs. As far as the statutory effects, I think there should be a passive receiver exemption built in a circular, very narrowly tailored for passive receivers, among them owners of real estate that did not.
Speaker 14
Thank you. I think we needed that clarification today. Missus Bodine, you noted in your written testimony circular liability exclusions for innocent landowners where contamination is caused by a third party, and contiguous property owners where contamination migrates from one source to an adjacent property. However, you noted that the burden is on the landowner to prove that it is eligible for these defenses, and they often incur significant costs in that process. Will these offenses be difficult to invoke in the context of PFAS?
Speaker 5
I would say yes because of what has been discussed here today, the fact that you don't know where the PFAS is coming from.
Speaker 14
But given your experience of drafting circular legislation and implementing it at the EPA, do you have any advice for us in Congress for considering whether to modify existing defenses or update new ones?
Speaker 5
If you could do both. On the modifying existing, you could deal with the burden of proof in the issue. Is it a defense where somebody raising the defense has the burden to show that they're eligible, or is it an element of liability saying that whoever's bringing the lawsuit has to show that you fall within that you are indeed liable. So that's existing. On the new ones, yes, there are I mentioned the equitable factors.
I mean, we've talked here today. People who didn't intentionally use PFAS are still being swept in. That concept of intentional use, I think it came up, maybe Miss Donovan brought it up. I mean, there are states that are issuing bans on the use of PFAS, and they have defined intentional use.
Speaker 14
My time has expired. I thank you. I will submit additional questions for review. Mister chairman, I yield back.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen Yields, the chair now recognizes General from Massachusetts, Mister Auchincloss, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 15
Thank you, chair. I wanna start by asking about testing with you, Mister Meehan. You noted in your testimony that you estimate that utilities will need to make capital investments totaling between, you know, 37 to 48,000,000,000 by '29 in order to fully comply with the drinking water standards. Enormous cost is something I hear a lot about from cities and towns, representing 35 cities and towns. Massachusetts, because of a lot of legacy industry and relatively dense land use, we have a lot of accumulated PFAS.
But the concern I hear is that the testing gives almost a sense of false precision. The distinguishing between four parts per trillion versus six parts per trillion can depend on the lab that's being tested. It can depend on the time of day. It can depend on what kind of glove somebody is wearing when they're doing this. And a call for action that I have heard repeatedly is we need in line twenty-four seven high integrity testing of the PFAS content within drinking water facilities.
Is that something that would be a useful investment from the federal government in terms of R&D?
Speaker 6
Well, I would not rely on my law degree to give you technical advice on testing, but, generally, improve, you know, this is a new frontier at these levels for not millions, not billions, but trillion parts per trillion. And so I know that the early stages have been rough, beginning to get the standards right, the methods, the testing. So, at least some, if you mean funding, would be useful to develop the most effective approaches, which I'm not confident to tell you what those are.
Speaker 5
Well, I wanted to point out that the drinking water standard that's been discussed here today, which is at four parts per trillion, is not the risk based standard. It was based on, what can actually be a reliable test, testing for. And it goes the risk based standards the BPA came out with were 0.01 parts per 0.03 for each of the two chemistries. And the four was at the practical quantification level?
Speaker 15
Yeah. I don't think we're reliable. At least in the sense of public health communications. I don't think we're at reliable testing right now, because I think there's a lot of variability that actually undermines confidence in the test results. And we need to make federal investments in inline testing that is consistent and that people can understand in real time, not just lab by lab.
I do want to move on this. Want one other issue. Miss Donovan, I just so totally agree in what you have been saying, which is that debating four parts per trillion versus six parts per trillion in municipal water supplies, we are chasing this contamination at the point in the bioaccumulation cycle when it is the hardest to mitigate, and we gotta go upstream. And we've gotta address it at the point of production. You've talked about using the Resource Conservation Recovery Act and designating PFAS as a hazardous substance under that.
Would you also support using Tosca, though, so that we can proactively regulate the production of PFAS?
Speaker 7
I'm not a policy expert. I work at a church. So I'm really sorry I can't help you with the details of that. But if you don't mind, and will allow me to take a little moment and address mister Peters, and maybe you both if you feel the same way. Be very careful about allowing shields where bad actors can hide behind them, because that's a slippery slope.
And we have seen that play out in North Carolina and the town of Pittsboro and the town of Burlington where these PFAS polluters are hiding, are co-opting the local utilities, running the show, and allowing the pollution to proceed. And then it becomes harder.
Speaker 15
I hear that. And I think what we're trying to avoid is this downstream finger-pointing at great expense and suffering. And it seems like while RCRA is good for remediating existing contaminated sites, we should do that. We gotta strengthen TOSCA and, you know, expedite unreasonable risk determinations for PFAS as a chemical class and enhancing the authority for persistent bioaccumulative substances and, just getting a lot tougher on nonessential uses of PFAS at the point of production and phasing them out. As we did, for example, with ozone-depleting chemicals in the eighties and nineties under the Montreal Protocol.
Like, we have frameworks for how to do this.
Speaker 7
When we did that with the Montreal Protocol, we replaced them with PFAS. And that's the problem. That gets into the green chemistry thing, is that we cannot keep doing regrettable substitutes, and we cannot allow industry to dictate it because they have shown us over and over again that they don't self-regulate, and they don't hold themselves accountable.
Speaker 15
Yeah. We can't replace them with other toxic substances, but we do need to replace them out of the point of production. I'll yield back.
Speaker 1
Jim O'Neill, the chair, now recognizes this gentleman from Texas, Mister Weber, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 13
Thank you, chairman. Mister chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record this letter from Dave Ross, the executive vice president of Viola, a water, energy, and waste recycling company. This letter shares recommendations on how to address PFAS management and shares results from a May 2025 test of their incinerator in Port Arthur, Texas, my congressional district, which the test shoulder incinerator destroyed 99.999% of PFAS contaminated waste. May I have unanimous consent to enter into the record? Sorry.
Speaker 13
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mister Meehan, is it Meehan or Mihan? Each of the same. Meehan was my next guess. Yeah.
Water utilities are already facing substantial cost to comply with PFOS regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act, including treatment, monitoring, as well as disposal of PFOS residuals. How would going back on your law training now, how would subjecting these same utilities to circular liability for PFAS on top of already existing compliance obligations, how would that affect water affordability, particularly in small, rural, and disadvantaged communities?
Speaker 6
Of course, the problem that small rural communities, whether rural or not, that matter, they don't have the base to spread the cost out, the ratepayer base. So they're at a disadvantage to start with, as well as the technical limitations that they have in terms of staff and expertise in-house. So, they will probably see a lot of noncompliance or failure to comply, and then the cost will be, I mean, you can just imagine, you know, they just won't be able to handle them. And remember, we've got other mandates too. We're dealing with lead service line replacement.
40,000,000 of those, we're gonna have to replace. Tremendous dispense. Rates generally, and I'm not limiting this to small systems, are going up three to four times the rate of inflation. And I won't say that's a bad thing because we've been behind the curve in terms of our infrastructure investments. But the fact is that is the reality.
They're going up, and all these pressures are coming to bear on, let's face it, the ratepayers, not the state governments, not the federal government. It's primarily the ratepayers.
Speaker 13
Has it been your experience that there's just not a whole lot of lawyers who are willing to file lawsuits in those small communities because the money is just not there?
Speaker 13
That was my guess too. So I'm gonna come to you with the same question. Small communities where they really can't afford to do that. What’s the answer there?
Speaker 5
The answer, this is a chronic problem whether you're dealing with PFOAPFOS or anything. And the answer actually is getting operators there who can manage the system because, frankly, in smaller communities, they can't afford to pay the operators enough to stay, and so there's a lot of turnover. And so you have a lot of issues because they're just not being operated properly.
Speaker 13
Okay. So we've got at least two attorneys on the panel, maybe three. Okay.
Speaker 13
And we've got a mom who has the most important role. She's raising children. So thank you for being here. Miss Wodon, I'm a come back to you. So we're now hearing how some state and local governments are reportedly pausing PFAS sampling programs, to avoid discovering contamination that would then trigger circular obligations.
Do you think more state and local governments will follow suit without changes to circular, or how would that affect, and if so, how would that affect environmental transparency?
Speaker 5
So that's an interesting question. I had not thought of that. You're saying that they're not looking for it because if they find it, they're worried about liability. I believe that's what you just said.
Speaker 5
And that actually can create increased risk instead of reducing risk. So that that's another unintended consequence of the very, very broad liability created by Superfund. Whereas, you know, I think people here today have talked about other statutes.
Speaker 13
K. I'm running out of time. Is it FOLB or FOLB? FOLB. Okay.
What do you think about that, very quickly?
Speaker 8
I think that putting the decision to the states is usually the best idea. Many states were regulating PFAS before the federal government acted. I think cleaning up property at the local level, at the state level, is real, it's quicker. It's cheaper. It's faster.
And you usually get a closure certification of some kind, which the market really accepts.
Speaker 16
Gentleman yields back. Now recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, mister Menendez, for his five minutes of questioning.
Speaker 4
Thank you, chairman. Miss Donovan, I just want to thank you for being here. I went to school in North Carolina and spent some time in Wilmington, so I appreciate the place that has been your home and that you fight so hard to protect. And as a father of a five-year-old and a three-year-old, I appreciate very much what you're doing to protect not just yourself and the families that you care about, but entire communities. Which brings us to the conversation we're having here today.
Nearly all Americans have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood. Even babies are subjected to PFAS exposure in utero. A new study found that PFAS exposure in the womb or in infancy significantly increases the risk of preterm birth, and triples the infant mortality rate. PFAS is found in at least 172,000,000 Americans' drinking water, posing serious risk to public health. Does anyone on the panel think that the work in limiting PFAS contamination and exposure in this country is done, is complete?
Yes or no?
Speaker 7
Oh, I'm gonna jump on that one. No. Not even close. And the fact that we only, as grateful as I was to the Biden administration for adopting PFAS drinking water standards, it was only for six. And now we're seeing four of them being threatened, the ones that are commercially relevant.
So, the baseline was to stop our drinking water exposures, but after our drinking water exposures for the majority of Americans, it's food contamination. And we're not even talking about food contamination right now. We're talking about who shouldn't pay for the problem, instead of addressing the total exposure pathway that we're all experiencing. It's more than just food. It's air.
Our beaches are coated in an atrocious amount of c PFAS in seafoam, highest ever recorded in literature to date.
Speaker 4
Don't worry. I'm coming back to you, Donovan. But does anyone else do you, just gonna go down. Yes or no? Do you think the work is done?
Yes or no? It's a simple yes or no. Do you think the work is done on PFAS contamination and Americans' exposure to it throughout our country? Yes or no?
Speaker 4
Yeah. That's correct. And so, I agree. And listen. It's about sequencing.
Right? If I felt that we were farther along on limiting the damage that PFAS causes to our communities, then I could see how we talk about liability at some point. Right? I just don't think we're there yet. We should be having a discussion today, every day, about PFAS as a public health concern.
The other challenging thing is that tomorrow we are supposed to be in session. We're being sent home. We were in a government shutdown, the longest government shutdown. We weren't brought back to Washington to hearings like this. We've lost legislative days, and every day that we're here is critically important.
We should be focused on the issues that impact our communities the most, which brings me back to you, Miss Donovan. It's been almost 8 years since you last testified before this committee. Do you believe that the topic of this hearing, circular exemptions, will help clean up PFAS in your community and in New Jersey?
Speaker 7
No. I don't. And I also don't think that it is, it's really going after the polluter pays in any sort of way. I mean, we're stuck in massive lawsuits to get our polluters to pay. And what we've been begging for the last eight years is legislation that makes it so locked tight for us to be able to get the polluters to pay.
We want every tool, every resource available. But instead, we're sitting here talking about how we can shield people from it, instead of creating a locked-tight accountability chain where everybody's at the table realizing we're all on the line because my family's already on the line for this right now.
Speaker 4
Upstream, downstream. Correct. Everyone looking at an entire continuum and making sure that we're protecting the people at the end of it, who are the American citizens that we are tasked with protecting. Is that correct? Correct.
Thank you. Miss Sam, it's my understanding that the party responsible for PFAS contamination in your community is very clear, just like the responsible parties in New Jersey's proposed PFAS settlements are very clear. So in this case and in many others, the manufacturers of PFAS who dumped into communities like yours will be held financially responsible for the cleanup. Is that your understanding?
Speaker 7
It is my understanding of the drinking water. Kimores definitely has the majority share, but they're not the only ones. We do have polluters upstream, and then we do have a massive, the world's largest, munitions depot terminal is in Southport, and we think the PFOS contamination along the shorelines is coming from there.
Speaker 4
Okay. And, again, I think we can all agree that it's the polluters, not taxpayers or ratepayers, who should be paying for the mess that they created. And those taxpayers and ratepayers expect affordable, high-quality services that protect their health. I think that's an entirely reasonable thing for any American whether they live in a red state, a blue state, a rural area, or an urban area like the one I represent. We should be able to pour a glass of water for our children, knowing that it will not harm their health.
I don't think that's too much to ask for this government, this country, in 2025. Thank you again, Miss Donovan. I yield back.
Speaker 16
Chairman yields back. Point of clarification, there were no hearings scheduled for tomorrow because it was a getaway day, and the hearing we're having here today.
Speaker 4
And the abstaining files are released tomorrow as well, which I'm sure was part of the consideration.
Speaker 16
Don't think that has anything to do with consideration. I think the consideration, in all fairness, was Christmas. Alright. I now yield myself 5 minutes to talk about the issues of the day. I find this hearing extremely interesting.
I'm learning. I have a lot of skepticism, and I am affected indirectly. I represent Spring Hollow Reservoir, the land that Spring Hollow Reservoir is on. That is run by the West Virginia Water Authority. The Western Virginia Water Authority tested in 2020 and found that they had a shockingly, not didn't know where it came from.
They had Gen X, as they traced it down, but they didn't even notify the public in 2020 because it wasn't listed as being something they needed to notify the public about until 2022. They then notified the public as they tracked it down. They found that it was your Kimores plant that had sent tanks, if I remember correctly, to a company called Prochem upstream in Roanoke County to be cleaned out because they had a buildup of calcium and magnesium. ProChem was not advised, I understand it based on the press reports. It was never advised that chemoirs had PFAS and or Gen X in this case, that they should be on the lookout for Gen X.
As a result, Springhaul Reservoir was contaminated. Prochem stepped up and put 1,900,000 into trying to resolve the problem in the Spring Holler Reservoir. Raises.
Speaker 16
Questions for me. Mister Mien, from a public water authority, should the Western Virginia water authority have known that Gen X was dangerous when they first found it in their water in 2020?
Speaker 6
Should they have known that was well, I just wanna be clear. Most of the people running water utilities are engineers. They're not toxicologists. They're not scientists in the sense of doing chemical research. And if, you know, this wasn't on the radar of society generally.
Speaker 16
So it wouldn't have been, switching over to medical malpractice language, it would not have been the standard of the industry for them to have been alert. They tested it. They saw it. They thought it was strange, but they didn't know to alert anybody.
Speaker 16
Alright. Miss Bowdyne. As you know, electric power plants intake, use, and discharge water that may already contain PFAS or Gen X. How can we avoid unfairly shifting the burden of PFAS cleanup to the electric ratepayers as well as the water ratepayers?
Speaker 5
You have identified an incredibly important issue, which is that, yes, because PFAS is ubiquitous, it's going to be in residuals generated by entities that are not intentionally using PFAS.
Speaker 16
Chem people. They had no idea. They were cleaning out calcium and magnesium, as far as they knew.
Speaker 5
That's not an intentional use, which has been recognized as, you know, by EPA as an equitable principle that you might want to use, if you were creating passive receiver liability, that no intentional use. But nonetheless, there are going to be residuals. They're going to be at incredibly low levels. So it's not the entities that you've talked about, like kimonos, which are gonna have high levels, or perhaps your textile manufacturers or the people making Gore-Tex, you know, boots, etcetera. They're at high levels.
It's gonna be people who have it in their intake water or have it from sources. They don't even know where it's coming from. And the levels are really low, but Circula doesn't care. There's no threshold. You're still liable.
If you can detect it, you can be held liable.
Speaker 16
Yeah. I was really interested in some of the concepts. I liked your idea, and I'm not saying you were promoting it, but you at least laid it on the table of shifting the burden of proof. And I like that because I'm concerned about what mister Falby has raised because all of my people downstream of the Smith Hollow Reservoir who believe that they probably started getting those chemicals in 2014, didn't test for it until 2020 or didn't test it at all till 2020, and then didn't know it was a problem till 2022. But every landowner downstream from that site, because they don't use it, they don't put it all into the drinking water. Some of it gets just released back into the river.
Could theoretically be liable. Is that right, Mr. Foley?
Speaker 8
Yes. That's correct. And as a matter of fact, just this month, EPA updated its website to include an affirmative, as I can understand it, an affirmative showing that a Brownfield grant applicant is not liable for PFOS or PFOA on the property that you're seeking a grant from. And that's not usually how it works. A phase one environmental site assessment is not going to say you're not liable.
Right? This is a technical document. The last thing consultants do is make legal pronouncements in these documents. So I don't know how that's going to work. I'm very concerned about it.
Speaker 16
Well, I think we need to clarify that, and I probably will have some additional questions for the record at a later time. But my time is up, and I now recognize Missus Barragan from California. Miss Barragan from California for her five minutes of questioning.
Speaker 18
Thank you, mister chairman. Miss Donovan, it must be hard for you to sit here and to hear some of the questions and answers that are being given by witnesses. Would that be accurate?
Speaker 18
What is it about some of the question and answers that makes it difficult for you to sit through? I can tell you that as a legislator, I think about my own family, my community, and say, well, shit? If there were toxic chemicals in my drinking water, I should know about it as a resident. And so just hearing of, well, should you have known? Well, I'm not a toxicologist.
Well, that's not our job. It just sounds like we're having the wrong conversation. But what is it for you that makes it frustrating?
Speaker 7
I mean, I think this goes back to what I said earlier, is that water utility lobby groups should be the biggest environmental champions known to man. And in the eight years that I've been doing this, I rarely see them. I see them actively working against us, treating it like it's a business, like water is a commodity. Water is a sacred, human basic right. We should be protecting our sources, making them as pristine as possible.
We should keep them away from industry. We should be recognizing that water utility companies are should not be profit centers ever. You know, we bail out farmers because we understand that farmers can't go under. They provide necessary food to us even though we have an abundance of food and we waste it sometimes. Water should be treated the same way.
Instead of talking about how we need to shield people from liability because we don't want them to be oversued, why are we not talking about how the federal government can make sure that no water utility of any size ever has to worry about whether they need to make that decision between having clean, safe drinking water or having cheap, toxic water. Like, that is not what we should be talking about right now. Thank you.
Speaker 18
Miss Donovan, sometimes when I've advocated for cleaner water standards or going against polluters, I've been accused of, well, you're from a very Democrat liberal area. Are you from a democratic liberal area?
Speaker 7
No. I live in a red county. I have a lot of diverse friends, and I'll say that, there's not a lot we agree on and can talk about, but this is the one area where we have seen the most bipartisan support. You come to my area, you talk about PFAS, everybody knows what you're talking about. You talk about Comores and Dupont, and everybody's ready to see them go under.
Nobody likes Dupont, nobody likes Comores. And you know what we haven't been talking about today is how are we gonna make sure there's only 12 PFAS manufacturers in the entire world that are causing this problem. Why are we not talking about how we bring them to the table? You know, Dupont is profiting off this right now because Dupont sells water filtration. We are allowing DuPont to get away with what they started back in Virginia and North Carolina.
They knew they had the opportunity and the chance to put the controls on, and they chose not to. And here we are, stuck in seven years of litigation with them just to get them to pay for our drinking water.
Speaker 18
Thank you, Miss Donovan. The Trump EPA has proposed broad exemptions to a PFAS reporting rule that was designed to help understand where PFAS are produced and how they're used. Collecting this information from companies would help the EPA regulate PFAS and prevent further contamination. From a community perspective, how important is it that industry be required to disclose where PFAS are used, and what happens to communities when companies are exempt from providing information?
Speaker 7
It's not fair because we're all making decisions, and they need to be informed decisions. You know, I raised my children on this water, and I can I worry constantly about the body burden that we expose them to unnecessarily? You know, I worry about any sneeze, any backache, any complaint of an ache or pain. Sometimes when we go out to eat, I will purposely drive out of my way to go to an area where I know the water is safe and clean. I came here, and I don't even know if the water is safe and clean here.
I don't even know sometimes what food choices to make at a grocery store, and sometimes I'm afraid to go to a farmer's market in our area because I'm worried that the produce was raised with contaminated tap water, contaminated well water. We need the right to know. It must be fully disclosed. It's the only way that we can have consent, and the right to information is recognized by the United Nations as a basic human right.
Speaker 18
Well, thank you for your advocacy and for your work and for being a voice, not just for community, but for those across the country. I know it can be challenging, and so being here today is very helpful. And thank you for sharing your story, and it's something we should all be advocating for and making sure we have clean air and clean water, and certainly, the ability to now have to question whether we can drink the water. With that, I yield back.
Speaker 16
General, lady yields back. I now recognize mister So for his five minutes of questioning.
Speaker 19
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The super fund law known as CERCLA has protected countless American lives. In 2024, we saw EPA advance new protections against two types of PFAS chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, widely used in consumer industrial uses. We've heard some of those uses today. These chemicals, unfortunately, have poisoned our drinking water in many communities, resulting in cancer clusters, low birth weight, liver disease, and more.
We saw it particularly hurt our heroes in Florida, at Ocala in the Florida State Fire College, where we saw chemicals and firefighter suppressants that contaminated groundwater supplies. These included PFAS chemicals. So our firefighters sued too, because they were facing thyroid, kidney, breast, and parathyroid cancers. And last term, I was able to file a firefighter PFAS bill, and we're actually working on a new one. You know, Missus Donovan, have you heard from any firefighter families in talking with families across the nation about PFAS exposure?
Speaker 7
Yeah. And it's devastating to hear the stories, to listen to a grown man break down. A grown man that you know is incredibly brave because they'll run into a burning building just to save a kitten or something. And there I have a friend, and her husband is a firefighter in Nantucket, and he developed testicular cancer. And she was telling me that on top of struggling through the diagnosis, they also found out that there was further contamination of their drinking water, and it felt like a double, cumulative whammy.
But they were trying to figure out if he should stop being a firefighter because the risks were so high. He's not afraid of fighting a fire. He's afraid of dying of cancer because he is not being protected. He's not being protected in the most basic way with clean gear, with clean water, and with making sure that the products that are burning in the home are not creating a chemical soup that he's enduring. You know, should he quit mid-career and find something new just because of this?
In our area, our firefighters were incredibly concerned as well, and they've been pushing back. But the problem in North Carolina is that our firefighters don't even have good medical liability opportunities. So they're at an increased risk of getting cancer. And in North Carolina, they were having to fight the state not to stop their exposures from PFAS, but just to even get a fair shake in insurance claims.
Speaker 19
Well, thank you for that. And I had to work on those issues on the state level and on the federal level with a cancer presumption. But we also see in the phone them now taking PFAS out of it, but we have a duty members to our local heroes to be able to get this done. Mister Mien, we saw in the infrastructure law under Biden 50,000,000,000 for the water infrastructure, including the state revolving fund, which so many local water utilities utilize. We've been able to work to secure over half $1,000,000,000 from that for Toho water, poke water, for OUC in my area to help with clean drinking water.
But we've seen the Trump administration propose a 90% cut to the state revolving fund for 2026, from 2,800,000,000 to 280,000,000. So as we're talking about trying to clean or protect clean drinking water from PFAS and other chemicals and making sure utilities have the money they need, what effect would that be if you saw the state revolving funds decimated by 90%?
Speaker 6
Well, it would be, it'd be entirely negative. I was, last just last, earlier in the year, had a conversation with the general manager of Milwaukee utility, and they've had a pretty good program to remove lead service lines. And they depend on the SRF. And they said without the IIJA or BIL,
Speaker 6
You're yeah. Without the money, it wasn't gonna happen because, you know, they've got a pretty, you know, a ratepayer base that's exactly affluent. And so, yeah, it would retard things. Again, it will default to the ratepayers. And so then you get into a local political discussion of how much you can afford to raise the rates, and at what pace.
And, of course, you know, if you've ever been to a rate pay hearing, you hear a lot of conflicting views about where the rates should be.
Speaker 19
And so if Congress delivers on our state revolving funds, this will keep water utility rates down.
Speaker 6
Although I will, and this will not be a popular statement, the earmarks are really devastating the SRF's program because they are grants. They are not loans. They do not revolve back into the loans, there's 30 states now that are getting less money from the SRF program because of earmarks.
Speaker 16
Gentleman yields back. Now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fluger, for his five minutes of questioning.
Speaker 17
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for the hearing. I flew fighter jets in my professional career. Obviously, PFAS is something that I was very familiar with because it was a foam that was used to put out fires of, you know, those types of weapon systems. So it's something that I'm definitely familiar with and understand the conversation today being really important on the contamination and what the implications are for how to deal with this.
I'll start with Miss Bodine, have a series of questions. You know, the Pentagon has identified at least 700 installations that have known contamination. And just baseline question on what are the potential fiscal implications for taxpayers, under the current legal framework?
Speaker 5
The Department of Defense has authority to clean up the PFAS contamination with or without the circular designation that we're talking about here today in this hearing. They have been required by the various National Defense Authorization Acts to report their liabilities, which, I forget their most recent number, but they do they are undercounting it. It is billions. It's, you know, they only talk about, you know, 4,000,000,000 because that's what they have underway, but they haven't done a whole lot of cleanup, actual cleanup work yet. So they also say the number will end up being much, much higher.
So that is a consequence of the uses of the PFOAPFOS, often to create for safety reasons, but nonetheless have created contaminant groundwater. So the difference between what they're doing now versus what they can, what would happen with or without the circular designation is, can somebody sue them? So right now they're cleaning it up, but they're cleaning up based on their own priorities and pace. With the circular designation, then, somebody can sue them and say, no. Put my site at the front of your list.
Speaker 17
Okay. So let's pull on that a little bit. Does it make sense for Congress to continue allowing liability to be resolved through prolonged case-by-case litigation, or should there be some sort of comprehensive statutory solution that addresses it?
Speaker 5
Well, I think it's clear that liability is the least efficient way of addressing a problem and that money is better spent on dealing with the cleanup, you know, whether it's DOD's money or anybody else. However, I'm sympathetic, obviously, to downstream communities from air force bases, etcetera. And so, but Congress has a choice. If you're creating exemptions, you don't have to include the federal agencies in your exemptions. If that's your choice, they are separately funded by Congress.
All the cleanup done by a federal agency is paid by the federal taxpayers.
Speaker 17
If you were to put odds on the cost, I know I'm asking for math in public, but just give us a scale, you know. Oh. Two to one, three to one, ten to one. I mean, so
Speaker 5
I've in my testimony, I did give some numbers about, well, what percentage of total super fund costs are associated with the transaction costs as opposed to cleanup. And, you know, it's the smaller the entity, the smaller the contributor, the greater the percentage. And some, and it was over 50% for very small parties that have been dragged in. They're spending more money on lawyers than they are. Cleanup costs.
For DOD, it's so mammoth I can't even give you a cost.
Speaker 17
Well, okay. Why don't I ask it this way? Who stands to gain with the individual suit method, and who would lose in that? I mean, are there winners and losers in each approach?
Speaker 5
Are we still talking about the DoD? Are we talking more broadly? More broadly. Okay. So if EPA were to take its money, the trust fund money that's there because it's coming in through the petroleum taxes and chemical excise taxes, and do clean up without suing, but do clean up based on the funding that they have, you could everybody could gain.
And then the question is, is there enough money in the trust fund to do that, or you still need to keep some people liable so that there's, you know, some people who people have been characterized here as true polluters, which, as I've tried, I think many have made the point, is a much narrower class of parties than people that super fund liability system sweeps in.
Speaker 17
Good. Thank you. That's very articulate, and that's, I think, the overall goal is to get it cleaned up, and have everybody win. I yield back.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen Yields, the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, mister Lantham, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 21
Thank you, mister chair, and thank you all for being here. This is a really important hearing. I think this hearing gets at, ultimately, in addition to solving a very complicated, very important problem, what side are we on? And I do believe that at the moment in The United States, we are facing one overwhelming issue, and that is the extreme concentration of wealth and power. And no place is that more true than in big tech.
And the data centers are an example where these data centers are going up all over the country, particularly in rural communities. I have a Wilmington in my neck of the woods, and they're dealing with a data center right now. And think about this. They, the data center comes in, some construction jobs up front, you know, at the beginning, use a ton of water, make a ton of noise. There are these legitimate pollution issues, and the question about forever chemicals.
But instead of tackling those things, what they get is land. I mean, we're talking about Amazon and these big tech companies. They get a bunch of land. And then these towns and townships that have no money, they gotta give them tax cuts, tax breaks for the data centers to come in, so depleting their bank accounts. And it leaves communities frustrated, angry, poor, and sicker.
And it's fueling what? It fuels higher utility bills for folks, less local money for towns and townships, and the pollution. Now these big tech companies get billions of dollars. Those are the winners. The president can make memes.
My staff does. I don't know? And now these communities may not be able to sue. We may not be able to take on these folks in court. So we gotta pick a side.
And, Miss Donovan, I'll give you the rest of my time. You pick the side of these communities. I'm gonna pick the side of these communities. So if my colleagues wanna join and say, okay. I'm gonna pick the side of these communities.
Amazon's gonna be fine. The innovation's gonna happen. Top three and some of this, you'll repeat. But top three things we gotta do to be with them, not the big tech companies. Top three things you want Congress to do.
Speaker 7
I wasn't prepared for that. The top three things is, end all exposures to PFAS. Make the actual polluters pay. We know the billion-dollar polluters. We're sitting here bickering over such inconsequential things, but we also need to know the health risks.
You know, part of our human rights claim was the fact that I need to be able to go to my doctor and have a real authentic conversation with my doctor about the risks of our exposures. We don't know all of those right now. You know, I'm I had to reschedule an urgent colonoscopy, just to be here. And I don't know what's gonna happen. But I also do my research, and I can't find, you know, a really strong link or a connection.
We're never gonna be able to fully, in a legal system, hold Comores and Dupont accountable without being able to establish a human causal link to the exposures. And we have been fighting in my community for seven years to try and get a large-scale human epidemiological study. That's what the power of the United States and Congress could do. You could start funding that research. You could pass legislation right now to get that going, and we could definitely hold these polluters accountable.
You can stop the exposures by joining countries in the EU and starting to implement essential-use bans. We can start talking about holding, sorry, the military. I just wanna go back real quick to there because, the DoD knew in the nineties that their ALLF was contaminated and was causing real harm, but they still chose to continue to use it and still chose to put service members at risk. And we know that there is a long history of the Department of Defense misusing our human soldiers and then not caring for them on the back end. So we need to make sure that there are really strong provisions to help DOD contaminated communities because of sovereign immunity for them.
So I really appreciate that you gave me all this time. I'm sure I could put together a longer list, but I think there's a lot more that we could be doing right now than just trying to talk about, or playing the not me game, the not me ghost.
Speaker 1
Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Iowa, Doctor Miller-Meeks, for five minutes for her questions.
Speaker 22
Thank you so much, Chair Palmer, and I thank all our witnesses for being here. As the representative from Iowa, I take seriously our responsibility to protect public health and the environment while also ensuring that federal policies are fair, clear, and feasible. In Iowa, clean water affects our farmers, our rural communities, our drinking water systems, and our local employers, as well as families. Many of the entities now worried about the circular liability, like water utilities, wastewater facilities, landfills, and farmers who responsibly apply biosolids, did not create PFAS but could still be swept up in a liability scheme that is retroactive, strict, joint, and several. Cost to passive receivers is only one piece of the problem here.
We should also explore options that support swift remediation and provide the liability certainty necessary for American industry to focus on solutions that allow them to continue to invest in the US rather than endless courtroom battles. At the same time, we should be encouraging innovation and American ingenuity. Iowa agriculture is already helping lead the way with promising alternatives to PFAS, including soy-based fire suppressants made from soybean meal. These kinds of homegrown solutions can reduce reliance on legacy chemicals, create new markets for farmers, and strengthen our economy without heavy-handed mandates from Washington. Miss Bodine, your testimony suggests that insignificant or inadvertent contributors may spend more on lawyers and consultants than on actually addressing PFAS contamination.
Can you explain how Circle's joint and several liability structure incentivizes litigation over cleanup, and what that means for small businesses, farmers, and local governments?
Speaker 5
Yes. Thank you for that question. The, in the context of, say, an EPA lead cleanup, they're only going to sue large parties. But the statute gives the parties that EPA sues the ability to turn around and sue anyone else who may fall within a category of liability under CERCLA, which is very, very broad. And those people then spend years.
I mean, my testimony talks about, you know, seven years, nine years to get out of the cases. And when they finally settle, their piece of the liability might be tiny, but those seven years of litigation costs will be huge.
Speaker 22
Thank you for that. I also, with having Rock Island Arsenal and the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in my district, I'd like to echo Representative Pfluger's comments regarding military installations. That is, I think, a concern to all of us. Mister, and so I won't ask that question. Mister Falby, from your member's experience, how has the PFAS designation already affected phase one environmental due diligence, financing, and insurance for commercial real estate projects?
And what does that mean for redevelopment, housing construction, and job creation in local communities?
Speaker 8
Yes. Thank you for that question. We've talked a lot about clean water this morning. Everybody is in favor of clean water. Everybody is also, I believe, in favor of brownfield redevelopment.
So it's important to be able to redevelop infill properties that are contaminated. And what we're asking for in terms of a circular liability, enhanced protection doesn't mean those sites will not be cleaned up. In fact, I think it paves the way for that kind of redevelopment because the concern is the unlimited circular liability, the fear of having to write a blank check and pay lots of lawyers, right, to litigate circular liability. So I think, you know, phase one environmental site assessments are great. They're just a look.
There's no testing involved. It's still an evolving industry, and just simply the fear that PFOS or PFOA may be on a site, not even caused by anything on that site, but maybe by surrounding properties or air deposition or other issues like that, it creates a great degree of uncertainty. And as I said before, the market investors hate uncertainty. I think brownfield sites are best cleaned up at the state level where you can get closure without that circular liability.
Speaker 22
Mister Meehan, the EPA has issued enforcement discretion guidance stating it will not pursue certain categories of passive or public service entities, such as water utilities and wastewater systems. Why does this guidance fail to provide real certainty for those entities, and why is congressional action necessary to protect them from third-party lawsuits?
Speaker 6
I'll get it right eventually. I'll echo our colleague Susan Bodine that IT guidance like that applies only to the agency, not to the two thirds of other litigants who are potentially responsible parties who can drag in a utility or any other potentially responsible party under the four categories. So, you know, that doesn't work. And I also cited earlier, I don't know if you're in the room, but there's a case in New Jersey involving Passaic Valley sewage district. And EPA actually brought them into litigation, the hope of giving them a get out of jail free card through a settlement.
Ten years later, they're still in the litigation because of opposition from some of the major PRPs, and there's collateral litigation as General house expired.
Speaker 6
It's a sticky wicket. And quite frankly, no lawyer I talk to, and any PA to their own credit, is just trying to do the best they can. So, but it's not a solution at all.
Speaker 1
Gentlewoman yields. The chair recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Carter, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 20
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Protecting communities from PFAS, so-called forever chemicals, is a matter of public health and environmental justice. PFAS are man-made chemicals that do not break down in the environment or the human body. They accumulate over time in our water, soil, and bloodstream. They're linked to serious health harms, including cancer, reproductive complications, and weakened immune systems in children, among others.
Nowhere is this issue more urgent than in fence line communities, especially in places like the one that I represent in Louisiana, which has the unfortunate moniker of Cancer Alley, where families live next door to petrochemical plants and industrial facilities. These communities, disproportionately black working class, already face higher exposure to toxic air and water pollution. PFAS contamination only compounds those risks. Strong federal protections matter because PFAS pollution doesn't respect state lines. We need clear standards, rigorous monitoring, and enforcement authority.
I understand that there are real concerns about liability for so-called passive receivers, entities that may receive hazardous substances, including PFAS, the wastewater or recycled materials, but do not manufacture or use those substances themselves. I wanna continue working with this committee on that issue, but in a way that doesn't weaken protections but strengthens them for the communities that are most impacted. Rolling back roofs doesn't make chemicals safer. It just makes exposure easier and accountably harder. For communities like mine, delays mean more years of exposure, more preventable illnesses, and more families forced to choose between staying in their homes and protecting their health.
Miss Donovan, can you describe how PFAS contamination has affected your community's health, access to clean drinking water, and overall quality of life?
Speaker 7
Yeah. And I'm so glad that you brought up the point about fence line and frontline communities, and the environmental justice concerns because there is the cumulative impact of all of this that needs to be addressed. There is a community that lives right beside the Samson County Landfill, which is where Comores sends its waste, or it was documented as sending its waste for a very long time. This community is not only now dealing with contamination problems coming from this waste landfill, but they're also dealing with hog farm waste that they've had to litigate. They are constantly in litigation just to try and protect their way of life and where their ZIP code is, and it's not fair.
We have private well owners in Brunswick County that are just now finding out that their wells were contaminated by Comores seven years later, all the way 80 to 90 miles downstream from the actual facility. And it was because the municipality had contaminated water, which has now contaminated the groundwater of the area. Think golf courses. Think, think just irrigation. Think of all of that.
And we are working through, but the state environmental department is working through the consent agreement to force Comores to pay for that cleanup. We are seeing communities. There's a black community, a predominantly black community called Rock Hill in Wilmington, North Carolina. And when developers come in and create new homes, they are bypassing the ability to give this community access to municipal water that is cleaner than the groundwater that has been contaminated again by PFAS. And so there is a struggle and a fight to make it equitable and just for this community to access a better opportunity for water now that it's available.
Speaker 20
Can I interrupt you just for a moment? Because I only have a few seconds left. I really wanna ask you about RICRA. We know that the Resources Conservation Recovery Act under the Biden administration was working toward coming up with ways to deal with this. How would RICRA cradle-to-grave waste management model provide your community with a sense of security, knowing that PFAS waste is properly managed and maintained through the life cycle?
Speaker 7
Yeah. I mean, we have, you know, we know that there are tanker trucks that leave Camores constantly. We've seen spills that have happened, but they don't get reported. It's been voluntary, eye-on-the-ground observation from the very communities that are being contaminated with the air releases that are having to call regulators and say, hey, you know, we took some pictures of this spill. You know, that would have been documented.
We also worry again, like, where is the land application of the sewage sludge that we know is contaminated? Where is that going? There needs to be a whole system to understand that. And, again, this isn't an issue about liability.
Speaker 20
And my time has expired. As I do, mister chairman, I just want to close with this. We know this, that if the big polluters are left to their own devices, they won't report. They'll continue to take the path of least resistance, which is to continue to contaminate communities. That's why committees like this and people like you coming to testify strengthen our hand in making sure that we are insisting that if coexistence is to happen, it can only happen when communities are made safe.
Mister chairman, thank you for your generous time. I yield.
Speaker 1
Gentleman yields. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mister Carter, for five minutes.
Speaker 9
his questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is certainly an important hearing, and, mister chairman, I applaud you, and thank you for holding it. The impact of EPA's circular designation for the two PFAS chemicals. PFAS, it, and, you know, we've established the fact that PFAS is used in a number of different areas, in a number of different things, in consumer products and industrial purposes.
And oftentimes, they're using lifesaving devices, electronics, and firefighting foams. And I'm gonna touch on that in just a second. But while they're essential for everyday life and many lifesaving devices, it's a very complex nature and makes the cleanup and disposal difficult. So I wanna talk about the practicality of how we deal with this. I'm not denying we need to deal with it.
I'm just I wanna talk about the practicality. Mister Meehan, I wanna ask you, how do you expect cleanup timelines, or do you expect cleanup timelines to slow because parties simply don't have any place to put the soil, the residue, the water that now must be managed as potentially circuit-triggering waste.
Speaker 6
Well, if you're talking about the waste or residue or biosolids from water and wastewater utilities, that's a real problem. And EPA hasn't really come down on what's the preferred technology. So, basically, it's a sort of ad hoc decision for each utility. Do you store it on site? Do you incinerate it?
Do you send it to a hazardous waste landfill rather than a municipal landfill? Big cost differential. So right now, it's cats and dogs how we're gonna do it. Now if you're talking about a superfund cleanup, those are historically
Speaker 6
Yeah. No. I absolutely, there's still mass monster mining sites out west. I mean, Susan Bodine can address that much more eloquently than I, but they're long haul cleanups, long haul projects.
Speaker 9
Well, given the, excuse me, given the significant liability uncertainty, the limited disposal options, and the broad range of parties that are potentially exposed, what do you think the top steps are that EPA could take? What could they do?
Speaker 6
I, you know, the technology may just have to evolve to a greater level. Also, the EPA is gonna have to maybe factor in some risk-versus-risk considerations. That is storing on-site better than sending it maybe to an incinerator? Well, personally, I don't think so. But there are consequences, and people aren't thrilled about having a new incinerator in their county.
So it's gonna be very difficult, as I say, case by case sorting this out and whether technology will save us. I know there was a citation from Veolia about their disposal, but I have been through the era of incineration for hazardous waste as a state official, and nobody's happy with it. Nobody's happy with it. We want the regulator to be a land-use authority.
Speaker 5
Yes. EPA, out of their office of land and emergency management, really does need to provide guidance that's a risk management approach. We can't take, you know, the office of water did a risk assessment that said, you know, 0.01 parts per trillion.
Speaker 5
That's not risk management. You need to say, okay. And states are already stepping out and doing this. Okay. You can apply these residuals at, you know, most states have said, okay, 20 parts per billion.
That's a lot different than 0.01 parts per trillion that, you know, that the office of water risk assessment would suggest. So you just need to have a practicable consideration that takes into account where there is really exposure and provide your guidance. The guidance that's out there, the most recent update with 2024 says if you have higher levels, use technologies that have a less chance of release, and that would be incineration, depot, injection, and hazardous waste. Landfills, the most expensive technology.
Speaker 9
I've got a minute left, and I wanna get to this, Miss Badan. I wanna ask you about the foam that airports use to put out fires. If I have a loved one on a plane, I want that fire put out as soon as possible, as quickly as possible. Yeah. Then what about the liability the airports are put under whenever they're using this, and yet now it is being regulated this way?
Speaker 5
Yeah. The airports were actually compelled by law to use the same firefighting foam that met the military specification, which for years and years included PFOA and PFOS, the AFFF foam. And yes, they are now being sued. And the real question is if, you know, that is fair? Because as you pointed out, they're saving lives.
And two, they were actually compelled by law to use it. And so I think that's an example where they are recognized as an equitable consideration, an entity that should not be targeted for enforcement under EPA's enforcement guidance. And if somebody's well is contaminated because of firefighting foam, then EPA should use its own resources provided by the trust fund and clean it up without suing it.
Speaker 9
Okay. I'm out of time, but thank you all for being here. This is extremely important. Now yield back.
Speaker 1
Gentleman yields, the chair now recognizes General Lady from Michigan, Miss Dingle, for five minutes for her questions.
Speaker 23
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As co-chair of the bipartisan PFAS task force, I wanna start off with some facts. PFAS contamination is a nationwide environmental and public health crisis. It impacts our air, our soil, our water, our food systems, and our consumer products. EPA's authority under the Federal Superfund Law, CERCLA, is essential to addressing it.
For decades, PFAS was used widely. We acknowledge it. But these chemicals are linked to cancer, infertility, immune dysfunction, and developmental harm, and they persist in the environment for generations. Nearly every American has PFAS in their blood, 97 to 99 percent. And today, we know with certainty the PFAS is harmful, and communities in every state have been impacted.
I've led the fight in Congress to confront this crisis. I lead I've led the bipartisan PFAS action act, passed the house twice, and would codify the designation of PFOS and PFOA as hazardous substances under superfund set in statute a national drinking water standard, limit industrial discharge, and strengthen cleanup authority. I've introduced legislation to eliminate PFAS from cosmetics, food packaging, firefighting turnout gear, and other products. Earlier this year, I led the bipartisan letter to EPA urging the EPA to uphold CERCLA designation for PFOS and PFO to reject efforts that would weaken super fund accountability. Rolling back CIRCA won't reduce the liability that everybody is worried about.
Instead, it's going to shift costs to the tax payers, taxpayers, and allow contamination to spread. While EPA's circular designation for PFO, PFAS and PFOA remains in place for now, it's under continued pressure from industry and others seeking broad exemptions, including for so-called passive receivers. And I want to be clear, this isn't a small group of entities seeking exemptions like municipal utilities and treatment plants. It's a much larger universe, including secondary manufacturers, industrial recycling facilities, and infrastructure construction groups. The topic today is about picking who does and doesn't have to play by the rules, and I'm deeply concerned that these proposals risk undermining the very purpose of Superfund.
Weakening circular authority delays remediation, increases costs, and leaves communities exposed. It isn't a partisan issue. It exists to protect people and hold polluters accountable. So I wanna ask Miss Donovan some questions. I wanna be clear about what the exemptions being discussed at this hearing would accomplish.
So I have yes and no questions. Miss Donovan, would superfund exemptions remove PFAS from water, soil, air, or consumer products? Yes or no? No. Miss Donovan, would superfund exemptions do anything to clean up contamination in impacted communities?
Yes or no? No. Miss Donovan, would Superfund exemptions make any meaningful steps towards getting boots on the ground to clean up the contamination in Cape Fear or other sites around the nation? Yes or no? No.
Miss Dunniffin, would super fund exemptions help any of the families who are being impacted by health issues caused by PFAS exposure? Yes or no? No. So I'm gonna ask you one more question. I am worried about if I have a family on a plane and you want something, but they are creating other ways to deal with it.
Should firefighters who are keeping us safe every single day, would this exemption help them get PFAS out of their gear and other things that they're doing to protect us? No. So thank you to the witnesses for being here today. The risks posed by PFAS are real and serious, and weakening circle would not protect the communities. It would expose them to further harm.
This committee has a responsibility to deliver real, enforceable solutions that protect public health and stop the spread of PFAS contamination nationwide. I urge my colleagues to take up the bipartisan PFAS Action Act and take real and meaningful steps to address the full scope of the PFAS problem. Let's show the American people we care. Let's show them we know it's in your blood, and we don't want it to harm you. With that, I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen, Women, Yields. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Evans, for five minutes for his questions.
Speaker 24
Thank you, mister chairman, to the ranking member, of course, to the witnesses for coming today. My first question will go to Mr. Meehan. In the, you know, several decades ago in Colorado, we had the location of the old Denver International Airport, which has since moved. It's several miles to the east now. But decades ago, the old Denver International Airport used PFAS and the firefighting foam for public safety to keep the airport safe.
And it's since moved decades ago, but my district is downstream of the old airport that, again, has that PFAS load in the soil and the surrounding areas. And so that rinses downstream to my district, to places like the largest city in my area, Thornton, Colorado, which right now is being forced to raise water rates on my constituents to pay an extra $2,600,000 a year for the treatment costs of PFAS, which is coming from a site that no longer exists decades ago that they have no control over because it's upstream of their jurisdiction. And I'll remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that when we raise rates on consumers, when we increase the cost of living, it increases the rates of poverty. And poverty also has a negative health outcome and causes real harm. So my question to you in your testimony, you warned about the dangers of additional costs that water utilities could be forced to pay in the form of cleaning up contamination that they did not create.
Can you share some more insight into the economic impact that the current system could have on water utilities, big and small, if Congress doesn't take action to remove liability from the Thornton water treatment plant for PFAS that happened decades ago that they did not create?
Speaker 6
Well, the cost to rate pairs is a cumulative effect. It's inflation. It's materials. It's the lead and copper rule. It's the PFAS rule.
It's aging infrastructure. I mean, pick your poison. And you added just another, I won't say needless burden, but, put it this way, an unjust burden on a utility to clean up something for which they were not responsible. It's just aggravating the situation. And it really makes it difficult when you go to a public hearing to ask for a rate increase when you have to point to things that you're really not responsible for which you're are being held responsible.
Speaker 24
Thank you. Going to mister Falby. We just heard about the impact that remediation would have on water utilities, and you yourself noted in your testimony that PFAS is expensive to remediate, but I'd like to get some more context. What is the cost and the challenges of remediating PFAS versus other hazardous substances?
Speaker 8
It's extremely expensive to test for. You have to take special precautions. The fact that PFAS is so ubiquitous in the environment and is, you know, viewed as impactful at super low concentrations. Parts per trillion, with a t, makes it very hard to test, which makes it more expensive, and then certainly harder to remediate. And there's not a lot of great solutions to remediate P5 at this point.
I hope that in the future, it will come to the rescue, but for right now, it remains very expensive.
Speaker 24
So would it make sense, rather than penalizing local municipalities, small operators again for pollution that they did not create, to take a broader, more expansive view of this so that we can, again, we all want clean air, cleaned land, cleaned water. But penalizing the little guy for pollution they didn't create, does that seem like a fair approach to you, or should Congress act in this space to come up with that bigger global solution?
Speaker 8
Congress should act. It's not fair. We have to remember the circular is the polluter pays statute. Right? They made a policy decision that passive landowners, current landowners of contaminated properties, should be held liable 45 years ago.
I would suggest with PFAS, because of its uniqueness, its pervasiveness in the environment, and the low threshold for cleanup, we need an exemption.
Speaker 24
Thank you. In my final fifty-five seconds here, miss, excuse me, miss, like a lot of other regulations under the previous administration that are heavy-handed and have unintended consequences, Circula today is being challenged in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit by the US Chamber of Commerce and several trade associations. What should EPA or Congress do if that rule is vacated in litigation by the DC Court? Thirty-two seconds.
Speaker 5
So I think that EPA has other authorities, some of which we've discussed here today, which they can use to target who they could target whatever's causing the real problem. Rikra can go after the chemical manufacturers like Camurus. Tosca can prevent new uses of chemicals and already has banned PFOA, PFOS. So Circle is not really the best tool because for all the reasons we've discussed here today. And there are other tools out there to actually address the problems that people have said they wanna address.
Speaker 1
Gentlemen, time has expired. I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here today. Members may have additional written questions for you. I'll remind members that they have ten business days to submit additional questions for the record, and I ask that the witnesses do their best to submit the responses within ten business days of receiving the questions. I ask unanimous consent to insert in the record the documents included on the staff hearing documents list.
Without objection, that will be the order. Without objection, the subcommittee is adjourned.
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