By Environmental Policy and Investigative Desk
Published: April 2026
WASHINGTON — For nearly two years, a landmark federal initiative designed to unmask the industrial sources of "forever chemicals" contaminating America’s waterways and agricultural lands has sat in bureaucratic limbo at the White House.
According to former agency officials and public regulatory notices, the Trump administration has effectively stalled a nationwide study aimed at tracking how manufacturing and commercial industries discharge per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into the public wastewater system. The unprecedented delay has sparked a fierce debate among public health advocates, environmental scientists, and industry stakeholders over whether the administration is prioritizing corporate relief over public safety.
The proposed survey—the first of its kind—would require hundreds of wastewater treatment plants across the country to sample and report industrial wastewater and the treated solids, known as biosolids, produced during the treatment process. Yet, despite being submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in October 2024, the initiative remains unapproved, raising questions about transparency, regulatory capture, and the true trajectory of federal environmental policy under the current administration.
Main Facts: What is at Stake?
At the core of the controversy is a class of man-made chemicals known broadly as PFAS. Widely utilized since the mid-20th century in products ranging from nonstick cookware and waterproof apparel to firefighting foams and industrial lubricants, PFAS have earned the moniker "forever chemicals" because they do not break down naturally in the environment.
The health implications of these persistent compounds are profound. Extensive toxicological research has linked PFAS accumulation to a multitude of severe health risks, including:
- Increased susceptibility to certain forms of cancer, such as kidney and testicular cancer.
- Developmental delays and lower birth weights in children.
- Compromised immune systems, including reduced efficacy and resistance to vaccines.
- Liver damage, high cholesterol, and thyroid disruption.
Because municipal wastewater treatment facilities are traditionally not engineered to filter out microscopic chemical bonds, PFAS pass through treatment plants virtually unhindered, flowing directly into rivers, lakes, and streams that serve as drinking water sources. Furthermore, the solid waste remnants of this process—biosolids—are frequently repurposed and spread across agricultural acreage as fertilizer, introducing toxins directly into the human food chain.
The stalled EPA survey was designed to cut through these systemic vulnerabilities by identifying the primary industrial polluters dumping PFAS into local sewers. By pinpointing the top industrial contributors, regulators could establish rigorous, nationwide discharge limits tailored to the worst offenders. Without this data, environmental agencies are left operating in the dark, relying on piecemeal information to tackle a pervasive national crisis.
Chronology: A Timeline of Regulatory Paralysis
To understand how a routine regulatory review became a multi-year bottleneck, it is necessary to examine the timeline of the survey’s development and subsequent stalling:
- Pre-2024 (The Development Phase): Recognizing that existing data regarding industrial PFAS discharge was incomplete, inconsistent, or altogether inaccessible, EPA officials under the Biden administration conceptualized a comprehensive nationwide survey. The plan involved querying hundreds of municipal wastewater treatment plants and conducting rigorous chemical sampling of incoming industrial waste and resulting biosolids.
- October 2024 (Submission to the OMB): The formal public notice and survey plan were submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for routine interagency review and final approval.
- Late 2024 to 2025 (The Standard Review Window Passes): According to regulatory experts, standard OMB reviews of federal agency surveys typically take approximately 60 days. As months turned into over a year, the timeline stretched far beyond historical norms.
- 2025–2026 (The Trump Administration Stance): The Trump administration assumed power with a mixed platform on environmental protection. While maintaining some legacy Biden-era drinking water restrictions, the administration simultaneously delayed other critical regulations and rescinded specific rules targeting chemical manufacturer wastewater. The EPA study remained unaddressed on OMB desks, leading former officials to label the inaction a deliberate stall.
Former OMB staffer and Rutgers University dean Stuart Shapiro noted the extreme anomaly of the timeline. "This is sufficiently unusual and a very long period of time that it is worth asking the question: Is OMB just sitting on it?" he asked.
Supporting Data and the Biosolids Paradox
A central irony of the Trump administration’s handling of the dossier involves its own critique of prior agency assessments.
Previously, the Biden-era EPA issued a draft report highlighting the dangers of spreading PFAS-contaminated biosolids onto farmlands. When the Trump administration took office, officials quickly dismissed that report, arguing it suffered from severe methodological flaws. Specifically, the administration’s internal draft documents asserted that the earlier assessment failed because it lacked a foundational, nationwide occurrence study of PFAS within biosolids.
This argument has created a glaring logical paradox, according to David Andrews, chief science officer at the Environmental Working Group.
"The biosolids risk assessment was criticized by this administration for not including an EPA-run national occurrence study, and that exact survey has been sitting unapproved at OMB for nearly two years," Andrews pointed out.
If the survey had been permitted to proceed when it was first submitted, federal researchers and state regulators would already possess concrete, empirical data regarding how much PFAS is moving from industrial plants into municipal sludge, and ultimately onto crops. Betsy Southerland, a former leader of the EPA’s Office of Water who retired in 2017, questioned the motivations behind the holdup.
"It makes you wonder if they really want to stop PFAS—or if efforts to truly find out who is discharging is just too big a disruption for the chemical industry," Southerland said.
Official Responses and Competing Perspectives
The federal government, municipal water agencies, and public health advocates maintain starkly different views on the necessity of the stalled survey.
The Federal Position
In an official emailed statement, the EPA defended its broader environmental record, emphasizing that much of its foundational work on PFAS began during the first Trump administration.
"The agency is committed to protecting Americans from exposure to PFAS through a comprehensive, lifecycle-based strategy while following the law and gold standard science," the statement read.
While federal officials did not explicitly confirm whether they intend to salvage or scrap the stalled study, they noted that they are actively working on separate regulatory pathways to curb PFAS wastewater discharges from targeted chemical manufacturers. Furthermore, the agency is soliciting public feedback on managing PFAS in biosolids and mitigating public exposure.
The Municipal Viewpoint
Not all stakeholders believe a new nationwide survey is necessary. The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) has questioned whether the millions of dollars required for extensive new sampling would yield insights not already captured by existing regional databases.
Cynthia Finley, director of regulatory affairs at NACWA, argued that a wealth of information is already accessible. "We would rather EPA look at what data is available already because there is a wealth of PFAS discharge information out there now," Finley said.
The State-Level Blueprint: Michigan’s Success
Proponents of the federal study point to state-led initiatives as proof that targeted data collection works. Michigan, for instance, bypassed federal delays years ago by empowering its local wastewater treatment plants to sample incoming industrial waste independently.
Anne Tavalire, a state official working on PFAS reduction in Michigan, explained how local oversight yielded immediate dividends. Armed with analytical data, municipal facilities issued clear directives to local industries: "Hey, you have to either stop discharging PFAS or reduce the amount of PFAS you are discharging to us," she recounted. This proactive approach forced factories to clean up their processes, resulting in dramatic drops in environmental contamination and safer agricultural biosolids.
Implications: The Road Ahead for Public Health and Regulation
The indefinite delay of the EPA survey carries profound implications for the future of environmental enforcement in the United States. Without a centralized, nationwide mapping of industrial dischargers, federal regulators are severely constrained in their ability to set uniform, enforceable limits under the Clean Water Act.
The situation has also exposed a rift within the broader coalition supporting the current administration. While traditional conservatives favor lighter regulatory burdens on manufacturers, health-conscious populist movements—such as the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-aligned "Make America Healthy Again" initiative—have demanded aggressive government intervention to root out toxic exposures contributing to chronic disease epidemics.
Kelly Ryerson, an agricultural and health activist who comments widely under the social media moniker "Glyphosate Girl," argued that bureaucratic foot-dragging undermines the administration’s own stated public health goals.
"The survey or a similar effort is urgently needed data to help decrease toxic exposures and ultimately the chronic disease epidemic," Ryerson said. "We have no more time to waste in addressing these harmful exposures, especially on behalf of bureaucratic interests."
As the OMB continues its silence and the study remains frozen, communities across the nation continue to grapple with the quiet, persistent accumulation of forever chemicals in their water, soil, and bodies. Whether the federal government will ultimately choose to unfreeze the data and confront industrial polluters head-on remains one of the most critical unanswered questions in modern environmental policy.
