Tequesta Notes
notes for a village
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Drinking Water Remediation
At the Council meeting November 13, 2025, the Utilities Department disclosed to the Council that water tests had revealed the presence of PFOA and PFOS compounds in the surficial aquifer from which the village draws for drinking water. See staff agenda memo.
PFOA compounds are classified as "carcinogenic to humans" and PFOS as "possibly carcinogenic." The EPA now regulates the concentrations of these compounds in drinking water with a standard for PFOA and PFOS not to exceed 4 parts per trillion (ppt or ng/L).
The staff agenda memo indicates that at least one water test result shows a need for water treatment remediation while also noting vaguely that "during this [water testing] process, issues were identified with testing protocols and quality control of the samples." See staff agenda memo, p.1. Other test results were not specified in the staff memo. The purpose of the Council discussion was to authorize the work to prepare an engineering water treatment master plan to remediate the problem with the drinking water.
Beyond letting residents know about this issue, we offer here the following four related points.
First, water safety should be a top priority for the village administration of course. We hope the administration will focus on this essential priority and in particular that it will have staff stop wasting time and money on projects like the rights-of-way proposal presented in September to change code regarding swales and the rights-of-way. See Review of Code Change Proposal; see also Additional Thoughts.
Second, the rights-of-way code change proposal would be harmful to water quality—especially for the surficial aquifer—and it would be a mistake not to notice this because protecting water safety and quality will be an on-going challenge. The rights-of-way proposal would result in more poisons leaching into the surficial aquifer for several reasons. First, the proposal would mean much more turf grass in a substantial area and more turf grass means more chemicals and fertilizers. These will migrate into the aquifer. Second, the rights-of-way proposal would mean far fewer beneficial trees and plants that help clean water by absorbing toxins and also facilitate aquifer recharge by increasing in-place water infiltration. (See a discussion on trees purifying water.) And third, the rights-of-way proposal would aggravate water consumption with the additional irrigation needs of turf grass further depleting the aquifer and thus increasing the concentration of contaminants. With more turf grass, more chemicals are added to the aquifer, less rain water replenishes it, and more water is taken from it. In every respect, this is the opposite of what is beneficial for water safety.
Third, in our view, the administration should have been more forthcoming much sooner on the presence of these contaminants in the drinking water. In addition to providing more timely and complete information, we also think the village administration could have provided better advice directed to the interests of residents. For example, the village might also provide residents with information on options available to filter drinking water.
Fourth, ensuring that the village has safe drinking water is an essential priority and it seems likely to be fairly costly to remediate. In this context, it is unacceptable that staff would promote a code change like the rights-of-way proposal that would impose on residents substantial additional costs to comply with the proposal's misguided swale and rights-of-way prescriptions and also additional maintenance costs for swales and rights-of-way.
The Clean Water Imperative
Contaminants in the drinking water are a real problem. We hope that the village administration will focus on fixing this problem as quickly as possible and in particular that it will not let staff be distracted with harmful and unnecessary projects like the rights-of-way code change proposal. Especially since the latter would result in more poisons flowing into the aquifer.
The village administration will hopefully recognize the priority of safe water as an on-going challenge in view of the increasing two-fold pressure from development: surface structures, pavement, and turf diminish aquifer recharge while increased water consumption depletes the aquifer. The quantities of chemicals that we unload on the surface and the means we have at the surface to prevent poisons from getting to the aquifer (or the river) have a substantial effect on water quality.
In this consideration, native trees and plants are immensely important and beneficial. The proposed rights-of-way code change would be actively harmful to water quality by replacing native trees and plants with turf grass. This amounts to destroying our first line of defense in water filtration and purification and replacing the benefits of native trees and plants with more chemicals.
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