Contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has become one of the most pressing water quality challenges of the past decade, with increasing public scrutiny and tightening regulations worldwide.
Known as ‘forever chemicals’ due to their persistence in the environment, PFAS compounds resist breaking down in water and soil, raising concerns over potential health risks and long-term contamination of water supplies.
In Australia, water corporations have been monitoring and managing PFAS levels for years, but recent global shifts, including the United States drastically lowering its allowable limits, have intensified public debate. While most Australian utilities have remained within existing guidelines, some recorded PFAS levels above the new U.S. thresholds, triggering scrutiny and community concern.
With updates to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG) introduced by the National Health and Medical Research Council last month, water utilities face a critical test: how to maintain public confidence in their water supplies. Australian utilities that have managed high profile PFAS contamination cases say the key lies in transparency, community engagement and proactive investment in monitoring.
Hunter Water Managing Director Darren Cleary is familiar with community concerns around PFAS contamination. Following the 2015 Williamtown groundwater contamination from use of firefighting foams at the local RAAF base, one of the first large-scale PFAS contamination issues in Australia, he was on the New South Wales PFAS expert panel that was set up to deal with the issue.
“We learnt a lot through that process. The challenges of dealing with an emerging contaminant – at the time our ability to detect it was well in advance of what the science says about health impacts. We could tell you that it’s there, but we couldn’t tell you the impacts,” Cleary said.
“Navigating that uncertainty while providing clear health advisories and maintaining trust was very challenging, particularly given the way it was initially handled by federal agencies.
“The principles of transparency and openness and giving people as much agency as you can is key to managing everything we do. These principles were certainly borne out in this situation.”
With the focus on PFAS in the media and new health-based guideline values on the horizon, Cleary said any water corporation not investing in getting the data and sharing it with their communities will risk the social licence they need to successfully run their organisations.
“My advice: get the data and make the data available. This is about your social licence. If the community doesn’t trust the water you supply is safe, that undermines all that you do.”
Power and Water in the Northern Territory had a similar experience to that of Hunter Water, with groundwater contaminated due to the historic use of firefighting foams at the Tindal RAAF base near Katherine.
Power and Water Strategic Communications Consultant Jane Dellow said it became evident early in the crisis that there wasn’t any trust in the information that was being provided. A lot of the messaging was being facilitated through federal agencies that were engaging consultants to present at community forums, which increased the sense of distrust.
Dellow said trust had to be rebuilt from the ground up and it was a local approach that eventually won over community members, with pop-ups in local supermarkets attended by Power and Water employees who lived in Katherine helping to turn the tide.
“I was there for a number of those early occasions. One of the places we held our pop-ups was at the local shopping centre and it was really disturbing because I would see people walking out of the supermarket with trolleys full of bottled water and the shelves were literally bare and the supermarket just couldn’t keep up with it,” she said.
“And those people who did come in and have a chat with us, they didn’t know who to believe and they didn’t even trust us as the authority that was providing the water.”
Dellow said the experience was confronting and jolted the utility into action to build trust back within the community.
“We did a lot of work in that space. We showed them how we were treating the water. We held an open day at the plant when the pilot treatment plant was operational to show them how it worked,” she said,
“We engaged our local employees who work at the treatment plant and for Power and Water in Katherine. Basically, we were asking the locals to trust us as fellow members of the community.”
They became the face of the campaign, which had the simple and direct message: “we’re doing everything that we can to ensure that the water that we’re providing you is safe because we live here too, we drink the water as well.”
While community trust is critical, utilities also face a rapidly shifting regulatory landscape, with stricter guidelines and evolving health research prompting major changes.
Given the public health implications, regulators are adapting quickly, leading to some of the fastestmoving contamination rules in recent memory.
Denis O’Carroll, Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, is leading research aimed at breaking down PFAS and eliminating the ‘forever’ in ‘forever chemicals’. While the water community has dealt with many chemical contamination issues in the past, O’Carroll said what is happening in the sector now in terms of PFAS regulation has no comparison.
“In my career, no contaminant has been regulated to this extent so rapidly,” he said.
“It was 2009 when PFOS and PFOA levels first started being regulated, one through the Stockholm Convention and the other by the US EPA at 400nanograms per litre in water.
“Fast forward 15 years, and now the discussion includes the sum of all PFAS [14,000 compounds], with many added to the Stockholm Convention and much stricter acceptable limits.
“That’s lightspeed in terms of regulation.”
O’Carroll said the response to the issue needs to be nuanced – it can’t be “carte blanche”.
“When it comes to public health, some sections of the media can supersize the issue, so public concern becomes disproportionate to the problem,” he said. “That’s not to say there isn’t one and we shouldn’t be responding. We need to be clear that we are responding and the response is proportionate.”
Last year’s revelation of PFAS in some drinking water storages in the Blue Mountains showed how the issue could leave consumers’ heads spinning when it came to messaging, O’Carroll said.
“In August 2024, when information was released about PFAS in the Blue Mountains, the water authority said the PFAS levels were below ADWG levels, so it’s fine. But the NHMRC regularly reviews PFAS guidelines and those guidelines were set to become more strict, which they are,” he said.
“And then now, in 2025, the proposed guidelines have changed. So, the public is left with spinning heads. The water hasn’t changed, but the regulation has.
“Any messaging plan on PFAS has to be really, really carefully considered so there’s not a diminishment of trust.”
National Health and Medical Research Council CEO Professor Steve Wesselingh said there had been a lot of support for the new draft guidelines from the water community and the public during the submissions period last year.
“There was pretty good support from the community and industry for the approach we’ve taken,” he said. While water accounted for only a small percentage of people’s PFAS exposure, Wesselingh said the sector had an opportunity to lead the way in protecting public health.
“Water is a more consistent exposure. We don’t know people’s exposure from dust or other avenues when walking along Bourke Street, but with water we can calculate guidelines based on assumptions of daily water consumption,” he said.
“The guidelines are based on very conservative figures. We then apply safety factors to reduce the figure we think is safe (for example, by 30 times for PFOA) to establish the threshold. There’s a bit of science behind why that is but that’s a simple way of putting it.
“I believe we are well within the safe range.”
Wesselingh said there could be the view the new guidelines were being too conservative, due to the uncertainty levels in some of the science, but community concern about contamination is increasing all the time.
“There is an increasing concern in the community about these things and we need to be better at responding to their concerns. We need to be responding in a way that is clear and not patronising,” he said.
“It’s a really important point that when we work with the community, they understand that the science isn’t static; we don’t always have all the information, but we are responding to the best available science at the time.
“And that’s where transparency is important, we don’t want to say we’ve looked at it and there’s nothing to see here or nothing to worry about.
“It’s important with PFAS and any contaminant to try to avoid an ‘us and them’ divide – the PFAS issue is a society-wide issue and something we’re all in together.
“We’re responding through the ADWG, but that needs to be one part of what is a society wide response.”
As regulation continues to evolve, the challenge will not just be about compliance, but about earning and maintaining public trust.
Meeting new standards is just one part of the response – ongoing transparency, investment in monitoring and clear public communication will be essential to maintaining trust and ensuring safe water supplies into the future.
This article was originally published in the Australian Water Association's Current magazine.