French company opens $35 million plant to remove PFAS from polluted Chester County creeks

While regulators and chemical makers are still reviewing who is most responsible for putting polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) and other “forever chemicals” into U.S. water, utility companies are building filters to comply with federal orders to get the chemicals out.

Veolia, a French company that manages water and wastewater systems in 39 U.S. states, on Wednesday opened a $35 million charcoal-filter plant designed to remove PFAS concentrations from two Chester County creeks.

Utilities across the country are planning similar filters to meet Environmental Protection Agency rules designed to strip the useful but dangerous chemicals out of the U.S. water supply by 2029.

The new PFAS project, at Veolia’s Stanton Water Treatment plant in Delaware, is the largest in the northeastern U.S., according to Estelle Brachlianoff, Veolia’s chief executive.

The brick building houses nearly 100 22-foot-tall treatment vessels, each containing 20 tons of salty powdered carbon, which will in time be burned off site to destroy the trapped PFAS.

“We are trying to be the decontaminator-in-chief,” Brachlianoff told a crowd including utility and contractor employees and Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer.

The new facility protects water carried into the plant by the Red Clay and White Clay Creeks, which run from the Kennett Square, Unionville and West Grove, Pa., areas and northwest Delaware, to 100,000 residents and industries around Newark, Claymont, and Red Lion, Del.

Veolia hopes to double its U.S. utility operations over the next several years.

The company acquired the Stanton plant, which employs around 70 people, from French rival Suez in 2022, with hundreds of other systems. The Stanton plant was designed by New York-based CHA starting in 2022 and built by Michael F. Ronca & Sons, of Bethlehem, using Newterra steel containers made in Arkansas.

Veolia also owns the former Betz and GE Water labs in Trevose, Bucks County, which employ around 380, developing and making water treatment products.

Since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year ordered PFAS removed from drinking water by 2029, Veolia and other utility operators have been developing measures to trap and strip the chemicals. The Trump administration has proposed extending the deadline to 2031.

U.S. regulators’ leadership in restricting PFAS has led to stricter rules in other countries, according to Brachlianoff. Even if the U.S. delays its requirements, Veolia has no plans to slow its anti-PFAS plant construction campaign, said Karine Rougé, the engineer who heads Veolia’s North American Water business.

Polyfluroalkyls and similar chemicals, developed by Wilmington-based DuPont Co., 3M, and other big manufacturers for Teflon-coated kitchen pans, firefighting gear and foams, and other oil- and water-resistant uses, break up into small particles that don’t decay, and have been detected in water supplies across the U.S.

PFAS have been linked to fertility, child development, and liver problems; testicular and kidney cancer; and other health and environmental problems. U.S. production of many of the original chemicals has stopped or been significantly reduced, though new compounds whose long-term impacts are less well-known have come onto the market.

Red Clay Creek carries PFAS at levels that have been measured at close to the former U.S. limit of 70 parts per trillion. State environmental officials and Veolia leaders say local chemical manufacturing plants, private industry and government users of the chemicals, and landfills where products using PFAS were disposed, are all sources, but tests and negotiations that might more directly fix responsibility are still ongoing.

DuPont and related companies, including its Wilmington-based chemical spinoff Chemours, agreed in 2023 to pay $1.2 billion to settle PFAS contamination liability to public water systems in affected towns in several states.

DuPont and Chemours are facing a civil trial this year in a case brought by New Jersey officials for damages from PFAS and what the state alleges was a failed treatment system at DuPont’s 2.5 square-mile Chambers Works in Deepwater, N.J.

Veolia has so far built 34 anti-PFAS units and plans about double that number to cover all its water supply utilities, according to Brachlianoff.

Some of the future plants may include membranes developed at the former Betz and GE Water lab complex in Trevose, which is now Veolia’s water technology center, Rougé said.

Meantime, the public is paying. State regulators in Delaware are considering a Veolia proposal that would cost the average customer around $10 a year to cover the cost of the Stanton PFAS filter plant as part of a larger proposed water rate increase.