Union County Water provides safe, high-quality drinking water that meets or exceeds current state and federal regulatory standards. These standards are set by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality at the state level and by the Environmental Protection Agency at the federal level. To learn more about our drinking water, please review our Annual Drinking Water Reports.

While we focus on current regulatory requirements, we also monitor anticipated regulatory changes that are likely to impact our operations in the future. Another aspect of our proactive approach is to conduct maintenance activities and voluntary testing as recommended by federal and state agencies.  

One of the types of substances that we test for voluntarily is Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) - a class of chemicals commonly found all over the world due to their use in consumer, commercial and industrial products since the 1940s. Our staff began voluntary testing for PFAS in June 2022, after EPA issued interim Health Advisory Levels (HAL) for four PFAS (Gen X, PFBS, PFOS, & PFOA). While there are still no mandatory requirements in place related to PFAS, we have continued to test for these substances as identified by EPA.  

On March 14, 2023, EPA announced its intent to implement the first-ever national drinking water standard for a total of six PFAS, including the four substances that were identified by EPA in June 2022 and two additional PFAS: PFNA and PFHxS. Union County Water is now testing for all six substances identified in EPA’s planned action: Gen X, PFBS, PFOS, PFOA, PFNA & PFHxS. We will continue to share reports of our latest test results for these unregulated substances in the Documents section on this page.

Because of the highly technical nature of these reports, we also want to share our test results in the form of our overall “hazard index”, which can help illustrate the big picture as it relates to the presence of PFAS in water. A hazard index is a calculation method that EPA has used for several years to portray potential health risks from certain chemical mixtures. EPA has proposed a hazard index specific to PFAS compounds, which is helpful as water treatment utilities across the country seek to share relevant information in a standardized way. EPA has proposed a hazard index of 1.00 as the standard not to be exceeded, and Union County Water’s current hazard index of 0.22 is well below that EPA standard. Union County Water follows this guide from EPA to calculate our hazard index for PFAS compounds.

In addition to our efforts to test for PFAS in our drinking water, we are also looking at data relevant to our wastewater system. We are testing for PFAS in the effluent from our wastewater reclamation facilities and at specific points of discharge into our wastewater system. Gathering data about PFAS in our community’s wastewater will be helpful to our operations in the years ahead and may be useful to downstream communities.