“To be quite honest, when you do a quick search online for ‘PFAS’ and ‘action’ and ‘U.S.’ you quickly come up with the PFAS Action Network here in Michigan. It’s quite extraordinary. It has made international headlines.”
Cate Faehrmann is a member of parliament in New South Wales, Australia looking into PFAS contamination found in the water drinking water supply around Sydney, and recently in animals.
“To think that PFAS could be getting into our koalas and our kangaroos and our platypus. We can’t bear the thought of that so for us it's not just human health it’s about beautiful Australian wildlife and environment that we’re trying to protect as well.”
Faehrmann doesn’t’ think her government is doing enough fast enough and came to Grand Rapids to meet with community members she found online who successfully advocated for action from lawmakers.
Faehrmann also toured the Plainfield Charter Township Water Filtration plant where supervisor Don Petrovitch explained the innovative approach, they’ve developed to deal with PFAS using granular activated carbon.
“Instead of a pressurized tank system that costs many millions of dollars, we did it for a couple million. It’s never been done quite this way, using our existing filters to take it out instead of adding some outside filters so it's very cost effective.”
Faehrmann says Australia is several years behind the U.S. when it comes to dealing with PFAS.
“So I’m going to go back to New South Wales and when that government says to me, ‘it can’t be done, it's too expensive,’ I’m going to say, ‘Yes, it can because I saw it in Grand Rapids.’”
