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City and state employees, as well as elected officials from the Tri-Valley, attended the grand opening of the Zone 7 Water Agency’s second PFAS treatment facility last Wednesday, which many said would further improve the region’s water supply quality.
Located in Livermore just off El Charro Road, the new Chain of Lakes PFAS Treatment Facility is the largest facility of its kind in Northern California.
“Zone 7 has been at the forefront of addressing PFAS … in our groundwater basin,” said Zone 7 Board of Directors President Dennis Gambs during the new facility’s ribbon cutting ceremony on March 26. “Today we reached another milestone with the Chain of Lakes Treatment Facility. We take our mission to provide safe and clean drinking water in the Tri-Valley, very important.”
The water agency has been looking at different ways to address PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, in the region’s groundwater for several years.
Zone 7 previously opened a first-of-its-kind Ion Exchange PFAS Treatment Facility at the Stoneridge groundwater well — located just west of Mohr Elementary School in Pleasanton — back in September 2023.
The new treatment facility, similar to the first one, uses state-of-the-art ion exchange technology to treat up to 10 million gallons of water per day. Numerous tanks at the facility are filled with small ion-exchange polymers, which are designed to attract PFAS chemicals in the water while the H2O molecules pass through, leaving clean water.
“Addressing PFAS contamination is critical as these persistent chemicals pose ongoing challenges for water agencies nationwide,” Zone 7 General Manager Valerie Pryor said in a March 26 press release.
“Zone 7 is committed to proactively installing the most up-to-date technology to address this issue as part of our commitment to delivering safe, high-quality water,”‘ Pryor added. “This new Chain of Lakes facility marks a critical investment in safeguarding water quality for the Tri-Valley community and demonstrates Zone 7’s proactive approach to managing emerging contaminants.”
Alec W. Naugle, senior engineering geologist at the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Board, spoke during Wednesday’s ceremony about some of the issues that PFAS poses.
“PFAS has been used in so many commercial, industrial and household products … for decades,” Naugle said. “(That) means there are likely many places where PFAS could come from to get into the groundwater system.”
He said things like Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF), which firefighters have used for years before it was discontinued for use, can persist in the soil for many years.
The regional water quality control agency recently announced that it detected PFAS levels at the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department training center that warrants further investigation
Even though his agency is still investigating other possible sources of PFAS in surrounding LPFD stations, Naugle said those aren’t the only sources of PFAS contamination.
“Regardless of what we find at the fire station — and other facilities like the Livermore Airport that we are (also) investigating — there may still be other PFAS that have contributed to the problem,” Naugle said. “Finding all the potential contributing PFAS sources, at the very least, will be very challenging and, in some cases, it may not be fully possible to do that.”
He said he was proud to see Zone 7’s latest treatment facility come to fruition because it addresses long term treatment while agencies such as his own work to remedy PFAS sources in the short term.
“This is really blazing the trail and I think this is the way of the future across the state as we discover and identify more and more PFAS in groundwater,” Naugle said. “We’re very proud to have supported this facility.”
Matthew Bates, assistant division manager of the California’s Department of Water Resources’ Division of Regional Assistance, also expressed support for the completion of both ion exchange treatment facilities.
“This is a much needed project providing clean, treated groundwater for over a quarter million residents in the Tri-Valley region,” Bates said. “This project is designed to treat PFAS contaminants from the groundwater, which supplies the region’s users with clean, reliable groundwater supply, improving their quality of life both now and for future generations.”
The state department had previously awarded Zone 7 with a $16 million grant to cover most of the Stoneridge project cost — the Chain of Lakes facility was partially funded thanks to a nearly $958,000 federal grant that the water agency secured with the help of congressmen Eric Swalwell and Mark DeSaulnier.
Gambs ended the ceremony with an update on a third PFAS treatment facility that the agency will be looking to build at the Mocho Wellfield in Pleasanton. According to the agency, it will begin designing the new facility this year.
“Zone 7 and other water agencies didn’t create the PFAS problem, but it is our job to find the solutions to make the water safe for our community,” Gambs said.
