ForeverChemicals NY

Dear Commissioner Lefton,

This letter follows my April 5, 2026 letter to the Department, which was sent before the Oak Orchard SPDES permit was signed. The Department issued the permit, NY0030317, on April 10, 2026 with no enforceable numeric PFAS discharge limits. I write now to request specific actions the Department can take, under its existing authority and its own published guidance, to address the PFAS treatment gap the signed permit creates.

I. The signed permit’s own pollutant summary table identifies the problem.

The Department’s pollutant summary table for Outfall 001 (fact sheet, page 47) reports that eight PFAS compounds are already detected in the existing Oak Orchard municipal effluent — before any industrial discharge from Micron has begun:

• PFOA: 6.0 ng/L (8 detects in 9 samples)
• PFOS: 16 ng/L (per Responsiveness Summary, Section I.I)
• PFPeA: 23 ng/L (estimated, 8/8 samples)
• PFHxA: 15 ng/L (estimated, 8/8 samples)
• PFHpA: 6.7 ng/L (estimated, 3/8 samples)
• PFNA: 2.3 ng/L (2/8 samples)
• Plus two additional compounds at lower frequencies

The Department applied a 10 ng/L action level to PFOA and PFOS only. Five of the eight detected compounds — including PFOS itself, at 60 percent above the action level — equal or exceed that threshold today. None of the other six received a numeric value of any kind. The justification, repeated 38 times verbatim in the fact sheet, is that “the permit includes monitoring to support establishment of future standards or performance-based requirements.” The standards do not exist now. The discharge will begin before they do.

II. The signed permit conflicts with the Department’s own December 2025 guidance.

TOGS 1.3.14, signed by Director Lamb-LaFay in December 2025, requires SPDES permits at publicly owned treatment works to include track-down programs and compliance schedules to identify significant upstream PFAS sources. Micron is the most significant upstream industrial PFAS source in the Oak Orchard service area — the entire purpose of the Industrial Treatment Train is to receive Micron’s discharge. The signed permit contains no track-down program. No compliance schedule for Micron exists in the permit record.

Director Lamb-LaFay was quoted in the Adirondack Explorer in January 2026 stating that PFAS treatment upgrades at public wastewater plants are “often not cost-effective and in many cases technically impracticable.” The Department’s own guidance, signed by the Director, states that “industrial dischargers of PFAS-laden waste should be required to remove the PFAS, since few public treatment plants have the technology to do so.” Both statements are correct on the merits. Both apply directly to this facility. Yet the permit was signed without industrial source removal requirements.

III. TOGS 1.3.13 omits semiconductor manufacturing entirely.

TOGS 1.3.13, signed by Director Lamb-LaFay in February 2023, defines “priority facilities” for PFAS permitting by SIC code. Its Appendix A lists 47 industrial categories. Semiconductor manufacturing (SIC code 3674) is not among them — despite peer-reviewed research (Jacob et al., Cornell University, Environmental Science & Technology, 2021) identifying 133 PFAS compounds in semiconductor fab wastewater, and despite the Semiconductor Industry Association’s own January 2025 survey reporting an average of 840 ng/L total PFAS in member facility effluent — 210 times the federal drinking water MCL. Micron’s Clay campus is projected to discharge 30.8 million gallons per day at full build-out.

The omission of SIC 3674 from the priority list is, on the evidence before the Department, indefensible. The peer-reviewed and industry-published data exceeds every threshold the Department uses to designate priority facilities. Adding SIC 3674 to Appendix A is a ministerial act that does not require new authority or new rulemaking.

IV. Specific requests the Department can act on under existing authority.

I respectfully request the following actions, none of which require legislative action or new rulemaking, all of which are within the Department’s existing authority under TOGS 1.3.13, TOGS 1.3.14, and 6 NYCRR Part 750:

1. Initiate the TOGS 1.3.14 track-down program for Micron immediately, as the most significant upstream industrial PFAS source at Oak Orchard. Establish a compliance schedule with characterization deadlines that precede the Industrial Treatment Plant design-build award.
2. Amend TOGS 1.3.13 Appendix A to add semiconductor manufacturing (SIC 3674) to the priority facilities list, consistent with the peer-reviewed and industry-reported PFAS load data. This brings the Department’s own framework into consistency with the published evidence.
3. Issue a written notice to Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection (OCDWEP) stating that the Industrial Wastewater Discharge Permit (IWDP) the County will write under its EPA-approved Industrial Pretreatment Program must contain enforceable numeric PFAS discharge limits, including:
   • Numeric limits for PFOA and PFOS at the federal MCL of 4 ng/L individually;
   • Numeric limits for the eight PFAS compounds the Department’s own pollutant summary table already documents in the existing effluent;
   • EPA Method 1633A as the analytical baseline, supplemented by the Total Oxidizable Precursor (TOP) Assay to detect PFAS precursors that targeted methods miss;
   • Quarterly characterization of any new PFAS compound introduced into Micron’s manufacturing process, with interim limits to apply immediately upon detection.
4. Reopen NY0030317 prior to its May 1, 2026 effective date for the limited purpose of incorporating the action level exceedances already documented in the Department’s own pollutant summary table. Issuing the permit with documented exceedances of the very action level the permit establishes, without any compliance trigger, is inconsistent with the protective purpose of the action level standard.
5. Engage directly with the Onondaga County Legislature in advance of the Industrial Treatment Plant bond vote. The Legislature is being asked to authorize $1.4 to $2.6 billion in public bonds (per Brown and Caldwell, the County’s own engineer) for a treatment system whose effluent the Department has just determined requires no numeric PFAS limits. The Legislature’s authority to condition the bond on enforceable IWDP limits is the only remaining mechanism to align the County’s liability exposure with the Department’s own December 2025 guidance.

V. The narrow legal question, asked plainly.

The Onondaga Nation’s General Counsel, Alma Lowry, raised a specific federal-law argument in her December 23, 2025 comments and again at the public hearing: that under 40 C.F.R. §§ 403.3 and 403.5, a publicly owned treatment works can only impose pretreatment requirements on industrial users to prevent “pass-through and interference” — defined as discharges that cause the POTW to violate its own SPDES permit. If the SPDES permit contains no enforceable limit on a compound, that compound’s discharge cannot, by federal definition, cause pass-through. The County may therefore lack federal authority to impose pretreatment limits on Micron for the 38 PFAS compounds the SPDES permit leaves unregulated.

The Department’s response to this argument in the Responsiveness Summary (Section II.E, page 15) was “See responses to comments I.K and I.L.” Those responses address different questions. They do not engage the legal authority argument raised. ForeverChemicals NY respectfully requests a written response from the Department’s General Counsel addressing this question directly, as it bears on whether the County’s IWDP can in fact contain the enforceable PFAS limits the public is asking for.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss any of these requests with the Department’s permit review staff at any time.