Some activists lauded the roadmap as a win for environmental justice; PFAS tends to contaminate impoverished neighborhoods and communities of color. Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement that the roadmap could help “change the landscape in our efforts to protect communities from PFAS pollution.”
But other environmental advocates have said the plan doesn’t go far enough. In a press release, PEER called it “woefully inadequate” and listed numerous “crippling” shortcomings, such as its failure to set an enforceable drinking water standard for compounds beyond PFOA and PFOS. And even for those two compounds, Bennett said, the agency’s timeline was protracted — the roadmap announced it would only come up with standards in a year or more. Bennett accused the EPA of “planning to plan,” rather than coming up with quantitative regulations right off the bat.
“This isn’t an action plan, it’s an inaction plan,” Bennett said.
