Gail Boudman said she and her three children were unknowingly drinking unsafe water for the past 20 years.
“You stand there and you [realize] your baby is 25 years old … [and they] drank it for 20 years,” Boudman said Thursday night. Her eldest daughter lives across the street and also doesn’t have clean tap water.
Boudman lives on Mountain Road in North Centre Township. She said she and her neighbors are victims of PFAS, also known as ‘forever chemicals,’ in Columbia County.
Boudman was among roughly 40 residents from around the county who sought answers from Penn State Extension during a forum Thursday on how to protect themselves from continued exposure, and on laws that could regulate biosolids in the future.
The state Department of Environmental Protection started investigating signs of contamination in April 2024 after it found perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at levels 110 times state standards at a local mobile home community during a routine check.
DEP believes, but has not definitively confirmed, that the contamination was caused by biosolids or ‘sewage sludge’ used as fertilizer on nearby farmland during the 1970s-80s.
Penn State is researching PFAS contamination across the state separately from DEP — and cannot answer any questions about DEP’s investigation — but organized Thursday's forum for the public.
DEP, meanwhile, is in the process of installing filtration systems in affected residents’ homes and is providing bottled water as it investigates possible sources of contamination.
'It’s pervasive … the more we learn'
PFAS are synthetic chemicals that break down slowly and can stay in the human body and the environment for long periods of time. The chemicals are in everyday products like pesticides, cleaning supplies and packaging.
Scientists still don’t know much about their effects on the body, but they have been linked to several kinds of cancer. Pennsylvania started regulating PFAS in 2023.
Brook Duer, an attorney with Penn State’s Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, said sewage sludge is just one of many ways PFAS gets into the environment. The problem, however, is that PFAS accumulates from several sources, which makes it hard to regulate.
“It’s ubiquitous,” he told residents at Penn State’s forum. He described PFAS as “recycling” in the environment from factories who use chemicals to make their products, to wastewater treatment plants that manage sewage, to fertilizers on farmland which seep into groundwater and back through plants and drinking water.
Duer said that despite how parts of Columbia County were subject to historical applications of sewage sludge, that's not enough to prove the sludge caused today’s PFAS contamination when there are so many ways PFAS can get into the human body and environment.
PFAS can be found in “97% of Americans’ blood serums,” according to Penn State Extension.
“It’s pervasive … the more we learn [about PFAS,] we're going to learn about more ways or more potential causes [for contamination]. So, getting to the bottom of a cause is ... not the most constructive thing to be spending time on right now,” Duer said.
Federal regulations in focus
Duer said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing its Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment on the two most prevalent kinds of PFAS, where it found that there is a significant risk to human health from PFAS in biosolids.
Biosolids are currently regulated — municipalities can enforce rules on where companies can put ‘sewage sludge’ for agricultural purposes — but that there are no federal regulations on PFAS in biosolids, Duer said.
He said the federal Clean Water Act would be the basis of future legislation, but that the EPA released its preliminary findings at the end of the Biden Administration on Jan. 15.
“Whether [the Trump Administration] wants to do anything about this … It's up to them, and if they don't wish to, they will just stop the process right there in its tracks and won't go any further. So, you have to understand, there's political winds that blow on this, just like everywhere else,” Duer said.
Update on DEP’s investigation into PFAS
Megan Lehman, DEP northcentral regional communications manager, said in an email the agency is currently investigating drinking water wells near farmland in North Centre, Mount Pleasant, Locust, and Catawissa townships. Wells in South Centre Twp. have been impacted as well, likely by contaminated groundwater from farmland in North Centre.
“To date, DEP has confirmed groundwater impacts above the drinking water standards in one or more wells in the first three townships (North Centre, Mount Pleasant, Locust) listed,” Lehman said.
She wrote that samples taken from 76 separate wells were found to be contaminated and that the agency “may expand [its investigation] to additional townships in the future.” DEP has sampled over 180 wells to date and plans to collect soil samples and install groundwater-monitoring wells in farmland in North Centre and a former industrial facility in South Centre in fall 2025.
Lehman also said the agency recently sent 310 letters requesting permission to sample additional home wells in or near the areas where “impacts have been identified.”
‘People are going to get sick’
Boudman said her father worked for the Bloomsburg Wastewater Treatment Plant and warned his family it was dangerous to put sewage sludge on farmland back in the late 1970s.
“He said … ‘people are going to get sick’ … I was probably 10 years old [when he told my mother]. And I am 57 [now]. When I found out my water was contaminated, I look[ed] up in heaven and I said, ‘Dad, you were right.’ If only … people would have thought back then … before they started spreading this stuff,” Boudman said, her eyes watering.
She said she now worries for her grandchildren's health. Her youngest is 3 years old. The Boudmans are on the DEP’s list to receive a filtration system, so the family currently cannot drink their tap water but are allowed to bathe and use it for cleaning.
“Well, you put a little kid in the tub [and] the first thing a little kid does is grab his cup, dump it on their head, or they try to drink out of it. Sorry, but I feel that they shouldn’t bathe in it,” Boudman said. “… After you find out what these chemicals can do, you just wonder [about the health risks].”
Boudman is not alone in her concern.
Kayla McCready also lives in North Centre Twp. She said DEP found that her well is within normal PFAS limits, but she lived at Brookside Mobile Home Village in the township from 2003 to 2006.
McCready said she believes PFAS contributed to her difficulty to get pregnant and her daughter’s health issues. She also said she wants to get her daughter’s blood tested for PFAS, but she would have to pay $400 out-of-pocket.
'Nobody's going to want to buy your property'
Boudman said that outside of her concerns around the health risks of PFAS exposure, most of the financial responsibility to protect her family falls on her shoulders — not DEP or those responsible for the contamination.
She said that while DEP will install its filtration system at no cost to her, once it shows that it filtered PFAS out of her family’s well, they will have to pay for maintenance out of their own pockets. The filters can cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000.
“As homeowners, I don't think we should have to pick up that bill, because we didn't contaminate our water,” Boudman said.
Boudman also said that she had to put on her property’s deed that their water was contaminated by PFAS. She said she feels punished by other people’s mistakes.
“We have property that was worth money, but now you go to sell it, nobody's going to want to buy your property, not when you have a contaminated well,” she said.
TO LEARN MORE
● PFAS FAQs: Penn State Extension's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about PFAS page
● PFAS and agriculture: Institute for Sustainable Agricultural, Food and Environmental Science (SAFES) page on PFAS in Agroecosystems Research and Extension Network
