ForeverChemicals CNY

Dear Governor Hochul,

I write on behalf of ForeverChemicals CNY, an independent public interest campaign representing 907 residents of the Lake Ontario watershed — including downstream Canadian signatories — who are asking one straightforward question: why does Micron Technology's industrial wastewater discharge have zero enforceable PFAS limits in its SPDES permit?

The Micron semiconductor facility in Clay, New York is your signature economic achievement, and we understand what it means to the region. We are not asking to stop it. We are asking that the permit governing its discharge be written to the standard the science requires — before the design-build contract for the Oak Orchard industrial treatment plant is awarded and that opportunity is lost.

The problem is specific and correctable.

Micron's wastewater will discharge through the Oak Orchard Wastewater Treatment Plant into the Oneida River, then the Oswego River, then Lake Ontario — approximately 1.5 miles from the shared drinking water intake serving 500,000 Central New Yorkers, with millions more downstream via the St. Lawrence River. The projected discharge volume is 30 million gallons per day.

The current draft SPDES permit (DEC Application No. 7-3124-00018) contains zero enforceable PFAS discharge limits. The Conceptual Design Engineering Report prepared by Brown & Caldwell in November 2025 — which your DEC has reviewed — documents the following:

• The entire PFAS treatment plan rests on a single sentence: Micron "stated during workshops" that PFAS concentrations will be low. There are no independent measurements, no compound list, and no analytical data — only Micron's self-reported assurances at a design meeting.
• The specified PFAS removal method is a membrane bioreactor. Biological treatment is not effective at removing PFAS. This is settled science.
• The only PFAS compound that appears in projected discharge limits is PFOS. PFOA — which has its own federal 4 ppt Maximum Contaminant Level — is absent. The 40-compound EPA Method 1633A array is absent. The Total Oxidizable Precursor (TOP) Assay, which captures PFAS precursors that 1633A misses, is not mentioned once in 213 pages of engineering documentation.
• Micron's own vendor, Carollo Engineers, stated in a November 7, 2025 response to a Regulatory and Facility Assessment Inquiry that PFAS limits were "not identified as a critical path issue" and that Micron is "still developing PFAS segregation and treatment technologies." A peer-reviewed Cornell University study found 133 PFAS compounds in semiconductor fab wastewater — and that standard targeted analytical methods detect only a fraction of total PFAS present.

The ask is narrow.

We are not asking DEC to stop the project. We are asking that before the design-build contract is awarded, the SPDES permit be amended to require:

1. EPA Method 1633A (full 40-compound PFAS array) as the baseline analytical standard for all discharge monitoring — not a subset;
2. Total Oxidizable Precursor (TOP) Assay in addition to Method 1633A, to detect PFAS precursors that targeted analysis misses;
3. Enforceable numeric PFAS discharge limits for at minimum PFOA and PFOS, consistent with federal MCLs;
4. PFAS destruction technology as the treatment standard — not filtration or biological treatment that concentrates PFAS into solid waste streams.

The connection to your own PFAS commitments is direct.

Your 2026 State of the State directed DEC to require PFAS treatment at landfill leachate sources statewide. That directive reflects sound policy: PFAS must be addressed at the point of discharge, before it enters the watershed. We are asking for the identical standard to apply to the largest industrial discharge in the history of Central New York — 30 million gallons per day of semiconductor manufacturing wastewater entering the Lake Ontario drinking water watershed.

If PFAS treatment is required at a municipal landfill, it must be required at a $100 billion semiconductor facility discharging to the drinking water supply of half a million people.

The window is closing.

The Oak Orchard industrial treatment plant design-build contract has not yet been awarded. The design is at an early stage — approximately 10% complete. This is the moment to fix the permit. Once the contract is awarded and the design is locked, changing the treatment standard will cost significantly more and take significantly longer. The right engineering answer is: limits first, design second, contract third.

We are asking for your office's direct engagement with DEC Region 7 to ensure that enforceable PFAS limits are incorporated into the Oak Orchard SPDES permit before that window closes.

907 Central New Yorkers — and their downstream neighbors across the border — are asking the same thing.