Reminder: Required Testing for PFAS

Reminder: Required Testing for PFAS

You are receiving this notice because you are a Public Water System that is a either community water system (C) or non-transient, non-community (NTNC) school and/or childcare facility, and therefore you are required to sample for PFAS by December 31, 2022.  As of the date of this notice, the Drinking Water Program (DWP) has not received a full set of compliance sampling results from your Public Water System.  Please see below for important facts and more information: 

Sampling:

• A PFAS sample must be taken at every entry point to your distribution system;
• Systems with treatment must sample finished water at all entry points to the distribution system (raw source water is not required to be sampled at this time);
• Systems who have tested for PFAS prior to June 21, 2021 are still required to re-test their water;
• The sampling procedure is complicated and has a high chance of producing false positives. Please contact your operator or review the DWP’s sampling guidance document on our PFAS webpage before sampling;
• You may contact the Maine Rural Water Association (MRWA) for PFAS sampling assistance. Please reach out to MWRA at pfasassistance@mainerwa.org for more information.

Laboratory & Results:

• There are no labs certified to analyze for PFAS in Maine, however some Maine labs will subcontract this analysis to a certified lab. You may contact a certified lab directly or inquire with your current lab about subcontracting. The list of PFAS certified labs is on the DWP’s PFAS webpage;
• Labs should be submitting results directly to the DWP, but if that is not the case, you may submit your results directly to the Program by email to dwplabsubmit@maine.gov;
• Result submissions are necessary regardless of whether there are detects or not. This is so the Program can verify that you have completed the sampling requirement;
• If you have already sampled and received your results, please submit them via email to the DWP as soon as possible, at dwplabsubmit@maine.gov; All PFAS results will be posted on the DWP’s PFAS webpage.

Your 2022 Required Testing Sheet (RTS) will contain this requirement and your PFAS lab results do need to be included on Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR).

For more information regarding this required testing, the legislation, and more, please visit our PFAS in Public Water Systems webpage.

URLs

• SP 64:
  https://tinyurl.com/yhzb3snb
• Maine DWP PFAS in Public Water Systems webpage:
  https://tinyurl.com/2p8dnm2j
• Maine Drinking Water Program Homepage:
  www.medwp.com