EGLE Director puts spotlight on PFAS life cycle at PFAS Summit

Phil Roos, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, kicked off the plenary session of the Great Lakes PFAS Summit held virtually last week, focusing on the entire PFAS life cycle. Over 2,250 participants registered for the event, representing 50 states, two U.S. territories, and 11 countries.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – also known as “forever chemicals” – continue to present some of the biggest challenges in chemical contamination across the world. States throughout the nation, including the Great Lakes region, are finding PFAS contamination in a growing number of locations where these persistent chemicals pose a threat to human health and the environment.

“When I think about PFAS, I tend to think through the whole PFAS life cycle – from upstream, to preventing the spread, detection, remediation, and ultimately destruction,” Roos said. “For me, that is a helpful frame to consider the scope of the challenge, where we have focused our energies, and where we still need to go.”

Following is a summary of Director Roos’ comments on the PFAS life cycle:

Upstream

There’s no naturally occurring level of PFAS, it’s a man-made chemical. And it’s still being produced and used in lots of products. Some states have been active on PFAS product bans, but Michigan has not made this move yet.

Prevention

The next step is PFAS prevention. Once PFAS is out in the world, we have the challenge of preventing it from spreading, and specifically keeping it out of our lakes, streams, and groundwater

EGLE’s Water Resources Division has been working with wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), through the Michigan Industrial Pretreatment Program, to drive decreases in PFAS discharges:  

•       Since implementation, 20 municipal WWTPs have adopted PFAS restrictions on the industrial users discharging into their municipal systems, and 86 industrial facilities have installed pretreatment or other source control measures. 
•       This has resulted in a 59% reduction of PFOS discharges to surface waters for participating WWTP since 2018. 

Michigan’s Biosolids Interim Strategy also continues to show successes and is serving as a model for other states. This program requires WWTP to test all biosolids for PFAS and places limits on what material can be land applied. That gives WWTP a huge incentive to control PFAS at the source.[RP1] 

This year, we had to tackle a big challenge related to dredging. Michigan has more than 80 active harbors, many of them managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Seventeen of those harbors are impacted by PFAS, and we are worried about spreading PFAS from the sediment that is dredged out of those harbors. We were able to work with USACE to develop a clear set of guidelines for testing and placement of sediment that allowed our harbors to stay open while preventing the spread of PFAS from dredging activities. 

Detection and Remediation

This is one of the areas where MPART has placed a lot of its focus. MPART just released their annual Fast Facts, a report showing what they accomplished in 2025.

In Fiscal Year 2025, MPART added another 32 MPART sites and eight “Areas of Interest,” for a total of 40 investigations that revealed areas where groundwater is contaminated by PFAS. 

The team maintained and grew their PFAS monitoring activities, including collecting 702 water samples, 1,860 fish samples from 64 waterways, and instituting monitoring at 124 wastewater treatment plants.

The state has had success in completing enforcement and litigation actions. Michigan’s Attorney General settled three big cases.

MPART has also highlighted the importance of coordination and collaboration within state government. For example, when PFAS contamination is discovered over drinking water criteria, MPART coordinates between EGLE, local health and state health officials to test and notify nearby drinking water well users.

We’re also learning from other states. Maine hosted several staff from Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and Michigan State University staff for three full days, where they toured farms and shared information about their farmer assistance program, which helps farmers impacted by PFAS contamination.

Destruction

Finally, there’s PFAS destruction. We ultimately need to stop moving PFAS around and find economically viable ways to destroy it.

Our partners at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were leading the research on this topic, and unfortunately the cuts to the EPA Office of Research and Development are really going to hurt our ability to make progress on emerging contaminants.

There is still good research happening at states, at universities, and new technologies being piloted in the private sector that will advance our capabilities to address PFAS at every step of its life cycle — whether that’s replacing it in products, improving filtration and detection, better understanding things like crop uptake, and working on permanently eliminating “forever chemicals” from our lives.