Curtiss board addresses concerns on chemicals

The village board of Curtiss addressed questions of concerned residents regarding chemicals that the village has been considering using in its wastewater treatment wells.

The village had been receiving phone calls regarding polyfluoralkyl substance (PFOS/PFAS) that village residents have been seeing on the news.

“Everytime it comes up, you got older people calling,” board president Betty Rettig said at last Tuesday’s monthly meeting. “I had to tell them that we are looking into it.”

There were some questions amongst the board just what exactly PFOS are, and how concerned residents should be about the chemical.

“PFOS is a chemical that is manufactured, it’s a forever chemical. It is a long chained chemical, they don’t know if it ever breaks down,” explained DPW Larry Swarr.

Swarr said PFOS/PFAS have been an issue in public airports, where firefi ghters sometimes do training at. “I talked with Larry over the phone and decided we need to discuss this as a board, to figure out where to go with this,” Rettig said. “If we do this upgrade at the water plant and don’t test now, but test later, then find out we have PFOS, will we have to spend extra money for the upgrades.”

Swarr told Rettig that the board would not have to pay the full amount, since there are several loans to help allay the cost of upgrades.

“The clean water fund historically was 30 percent forgiveness on a loan now it is 49 percent forgiveness. “Emerging contaminants funding is up to 100 percent funding.”

An emerging contaminant are chemicals that are not yet regulated and their existence brings concerns to health.

“It’s been several years since they stopped making PFOS/ PFAS,” said Swarr. “The manufacturers knew it was bad and they still made it. The manufacturers’ employees were having miscarriages because of it.”

The possible use of the chemical stems from Curtiss’ smaller pool of resources to work to become compliant with new DNR limits on phosphorus.

“We found out trying to filter out phosphorus that is new enough technology and there isn’t a lot of it out there. It’s not like BOD’s where everyone and their brother has treatment for it,” Swarr exclaimed.

“You get to PFOS/PFAS it’s relatively lower technology,” Swarr was told last year around this time they’d be required to test. “The EPA is requiring every city with over a population of 3,000 to test for PFOS/PFAS.”

Board member Jonathan Uhruh declared, “I don’t know if there is quite enough information to make a decision.

“I can do more research, look into costs and treatments,” said Swarr. “It is very expensive to have the testing done, it takes hundreds of dollars per test. People have a lot of problems with getting false postives.”

“If you do have it, particularly in your drinking water, you’ll be looking at putting in infiltration to get rid of it,” Swar said.

The board tabled any decision for now, and vowed to address these discussions in next month’s meeting.

Other business

_ A motion was passed for two new ordinances for manufactured homes and communities to establish and enforce standards and regulations that will promote public health and welfare of Curtiss residents.

_ A motion was approved for 15 loads of blue rock for the gravel roads at a cost of $240-250 per road.