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Approximately 32,000 people drink the tap water in Moses Lake, Washington, an agricultural town in the Columbia River basin approximately 175 miles to the east of Seattle. If you were to sip that water over the course of a lifetime, you’d consume 7,457 times the recommended limit of perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid — two chemicals that fall under the umbrella of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals.”
Moses Lake’s contaminated groundwater dates back to when the town was the site of the Larson Air Force Base, which was also used for years as a dump site for toxic waste. But its story is not unique: the city’s water utility is one of 563 in the Environmental Working Group’s newly updated tap water database to report unsafe levels of PFOA and PFOS. That’s not even to mention all the other possible PFAS contaminants that can be found in drinking water or the utilities that haven’t tested for PFAS at all.
Though the Environmental Protection Agency is required by a 1996 amendment to the Safe Water Drinking Act to report drinking water data, it’s never released a comprehensive database, and information can be hard to come by. EWG, a nonprofit that focuses on contaminants and toxins, synthesized reports from 50,000 individual water systems across the country, looking at more than 300 contaminants beyond PFAS. It also offers fairly conservative exposure recommendations for each, often based on California’s public health goals. “EWG is filling this need for people to have a national clearinghouse where they can easily access their drinking water data,” Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist with EWG, told me.
The United States Geological Survey estimates that as much as 20% of Americans drink, bathe, and brush their teeth with PFAS-contaminated water. But unless you know where to look — or bother to — you could be drinking the chemicals entirely unawares. “The first step is to find out about what’s in your drinking water,” Stoiber added. “Depending on where you are, the quality of your drinking water can vary.”
The obvious safeguard here is federal regulations. But despite PFAS being linked to a whole host of poor health outcomes, including kidney and testicular cancer, decreased fertility, and thyroid disease, the Environmental Protection Agency only announced legally enforceable limits for six PFAS chemicals in drinking water last year, under President Joe Biden. (The EPA has estimated that the quantifiable health benefits of those six regulations alone reach $1.5 billion annually.) At the same time, a Biden-era effort to limit PFAS discharged into industrial wastewater — which can subsequently spread to drinking water — stalled out in 2024, and never advanced past the notice phase of the rulemaking process. President Trump promptly scrapped the draft guidelines after taking office.
The future of PFAS regulation now hangs in a strange limbo. Though EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin previously voted for regulating some PFAS in drinking water while serving as a New York congressman, the deregulatory influences in the Trump administration seem poised to win out over the voices in the Make America Healthy Again camp epitomized by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s often conspiratorial emphasis on “wellness.” (While some concerns, like microplastics and PFAS, are backed by ample research, the right-wing health movement also expresses skepticism about long-proven health measures like pasteurization and vaccines.)
But as Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin, the co-authors of the forthcoming book Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America, chorused to me, RFK Jr. “isn’t in charge of the EPA.” In fact, the Project 2025 blueprint for the Trump presidency — over a third of which has already been implemented — explicitly singles out a need to “revisit” a Biden-era designation of PFAS as hazardous.
In filling out his environmental team, Trump reappointed Nancy Beck, who has a history of opposing PFAS regulations, as a senior adviser to the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety. Lynn Ann Dekleva — who spent three decades at DuPont, the chemical manufacturer accused of concealing the dangers of PFAS by Ohio attorney Rob Bilott of Dark Waters fame — is also now the EPA’s deputy assistant administrator. In Congress, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is chaired by Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who has argued that the dangers of PFAS have been overblown, and that the chemicals are too expensive to regulate. Widespread federal layoffs by Elon Musk’s efficiency team will also stymie efforts to curb PFAS, the regulation of which would require “scaling up — not scaling down — government bodies such as the EPA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and so on,” the International Chemical Secretariat, an environmental organization, has noted.
Though some states have begun implementing their own PFAS restrictions, “the more that we test for PFAS, the more places that we’re finding it,” Stoiber, the EWG scientist, told me. “It’s being addressed in a patchwork way.”
EWG recommends investing in a good water filtration system if you live in a place with PFAS contamination. But “we recognize that filtering water isn’t the solution to water contamination,” Sydney Evans, an EWG senior science analyst, added to me. “The burden should not be on the individual.”
Still, with clean water regulations in jeopardy, the onus nevertheless falls on individuals to assess their own risks. That’s long been the case with PFAS in particular, according to Udasin, the author. “It’s been like that from the beginning,” she told me. “Regulatory agencies kicked the can down the line; it was really the grassroots activists and scientists working together who raised awareness about this issue in terms of home filtration systems, which now some states have provided for people.”
Perhaps most alarming of all, though, is the fact that drinking water is only a part of the picture when it comes to PFAS exposure. “The water issue with PFAS is one that we often hear about because that’s the one that impacts a lot of people very acutely,” Frazin, Udasin’s co-author, told me. But people are also exposed to PFAS “in their personal care products, waterproof cosmetics, nonstick pans, and waterproof clothing. They’re also in a lot of stain-resistant sprays.” By the EPAs estimate, just 20% of PFAS exposure probably comes from contaminated drinking water.
The nasty truth about forever chemicals is contained in their name — they aren’t going away. The Larson Air Force Base in Lake Moses, Washington, closed in 1966, but the legacy of PFAS lingers in the groundwater to this day. Until a government steps up to regulate not just PFAS in drinking water, but production at the source, lives will be in danger. “We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if PFAS wasn’t in the water to begin with,” Evans of EWG reminded me. “There is progress being made, but it’s looking upstream where we can solve a lot of these issues.”
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.