North Centre Township’s largest mobile home community is investigating its water supply after finding chemical levels 110 times higher than state regulations. But the community’s soil may be to blame.
PFAS are man-made chemicals that break down slowly and can stay in the human body and the environment for long periods of time. They’re in everyday products such as cleaning supplies, pesticides and food packaging.
Pennsylvania started regulating PFAS, or "forever chemicals," in January 2023. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) mandates all communities report their PFAS levels as part of yearly water testing. Water systems can have a maximum of 14 parts per trillion or 18 parts per trillion of PFAS, depending on the kind of chemical found.
Brookside Village Mobile Home Park in North Centre, Columbia County found a maximum of 2100 parts per trillion of PFAS in its report sent to the DEP on April 9, according to DEP spokesperson Megan Lehman.
Are PFAS serious?
Carla Ng broke down what "part per trillion" means. It seems nebulous at first, but it’s vital in understanding PFAS contamination. She is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.
“It doesn’t sound like a problem because it’s a very, very small amount. So, we don’t normally think about things in those concentrations because it’s so tiny. A part per trillion means there’s basically one drop of PFAS in a trillion drops of the water that’s being measured,” said Ng.
But that tiny drop has a massive impact.
“A number of these PFAS…have been linked to liver disease, several types of cancer including kidney cancer and testicular cancer, elevated cholesterol in the blood and several other types of toxic effects,” said Ng.
Brookside is installing filtration systems in all residents’ kitchen faucets, according to an emailed statement from Ken Frydman, a media representative. The email did not say whether filtration systems would be installed in residents’ bathroom sinks or showers.
Ng added residents can use affordable systems like Brita filters to clean their drinking water. She stressed they should change their filters every one to three months to make sure they’re working properly.
What caused the contamination?
While the DEP’s Safe Water Drinking Program is working with Brookside to investigate its water system, Lehman said the DEP believes Brookside’s soil caused the contamination.
“Our current understanding is that the PFAS levels were likely caused by impacts occurring to the groundwater sources that the water system uses, not inherent to the water system itself,” Lehman wrote in an emailed statement.
That doesn’t surprise Ng. She said it explains why nearby water systems like Pennsylvania American Water – Berwick reported PFAS levels below state regulations in the same quarterly report.
“It really has to do with the history of the site,” said Ng. “It matters whether you’re getting your water from surface water versus groundwater. And if you’re getting your water from groundwater and it happens to be near an area that was once contaminated, it could be by an airport, it could be by... previous applications of firefighting foam. It could be because of some kind of industrial activity.”
Ng added that PFAS is a common ingredient in biosolids like pesticides and fertilizers, which exposes agricultural communities to contamination.
North Centre Supervisor Ron LeVan said the township will work with the DEP to address the problem. He never thought his community would face an environmental crisis.
“We’re a rural agricultural community here, a rural township. And the Brookside Mobile Home Park is one of our more highly densely populated communities,” said LeVan. “So yeah, it kind of caught us kind of blindsighted.”
The DEP’s Environmental Cleanup and Brownfields Program is sampling public and private wells within a half-mile radius to check for PFAS, according to Lehman.
She added water authorities can apply for financial assistance for treating PFAS from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority (PENNVEST).
“PENNVEST has been able to fund 100% of all applications received from water authorities to date for PFAS remediation investments and has the financial capacity to address any additional requests for the foreseeable future,” said Lehman.
For more information and resources on PFAS in Pennsylvania, visit the Department of Environmental Protection’s PFAS webpage.
