EPA Administrator Establishes New Council on PFAS

On April 27, EPA Administrator Michael Regan issued a memo to EPA’s senior leadership to create a new “EPA Council on PFAS (ECP).” The purpose of the council is to build “on the agency’s ongoing work to better understand and ultimately reduce the potential risks caused by these chemicals.”

In the memo, Regan says one of his top priorities for EPA is to prioritize partnerships and collaboration with our federal, state, tribal and local partners, and engage the public on PFAS. Radhika Fox, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of Water, and Deb Szaro, Acting Regional Administrator in Region 1, will convene and lead the ECP, which will be comprised of senior EPA career officials from across the agency.

The agency’s ongoing work on PFAS is based on the 2019 EPA PFAS Action Plan and Regan is directing the ECP to: develop a multi-year strategy; continue close interagency coordination; work with all EPA programs and regions on funding and financing; and expand engagement with federal, state, and tribal partners. For more information, read the memo here, and visit the EPA PFAS website at: www.epa.gov/pfas.