Collinsville is nearly finished with an engineering analysis needed for a state grant application that would cover the remaining cost to retrofit its water treatment plant so it can filter out so-called forever chemicals.
However, staff members of the Metro East suburb are still working to identify funding opportunities to help residents buy or install temporary filters in their homes before the renovations are made. The added costs, and potential health concerns, were top of mind for Collinsville residents at Tuesday night’s city council meeting.
“We are a one-income household on a limited budget,” Julie Ford told the council. “We can't afford filtration systems.”
Last month, chief water operator Michael Crawford and superintendent of utilities William Jones recommended residents filter their drinking and cooking water after tests this summer found PFAS, short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl. These chemicals take a long time to deteriorate and some can cause health problems when people are repeatedly exposed.
A simple filter won’t remove the chemicals either. The three options recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce PFAS range from $20 to $1,000, not including maintenance costs.
“A lot of us are one-income households, and filtration systems can be expensive,” Linnie Anderson, another resident, said.
If residents choose to install or buy what’s called a “point of use” filter, it will be important to maintain them, said Scott Hunt, the city’s engineer on the project. Unmaintained filters can harbor bacteria, he said.
Until the city can fix the water plant, the top objective will be finding a way to subsidize the cost of those filters for residents, said Derek Jackson, the city manager. If the city were to purchase filters, it will cost between $250,000 and $1.25 million.
Right now, Collinsville officials have discussed offering rebates for those residents who buy filters or giving them a credit on a future water bill. They’ve also inquired with private companies about buying filters in bulk at a discounted rate, and they’ve been looking for federal, state or county funding to help pay for them.
The priority will be helping low-income families and senior citizens, Jackson said.
“We hear you loud and clear on that,” Jackson told residents. “That's something we're very concerned about.”
One of the PFAS chemicals that can cause health problems is perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. Under new guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency, the limit for drinking water is 4 parts per trillion.
Samples of treated drinking water in Collinsville taken in May and June found PFOA levels of 11 and 17 parts per trillion, respectively, Crawford said last month.
“PFAS exists in many facets of our day-to-day lives,” he said this week. It can be found in everyday hygiene products, food packaging or non-stick cookware, for example.
While many questions regarding health concerns from residents couldn’t be answered because there’s a lack of research and the panel assembled weren’t health experts, Collinsville officials said repeated exposure over long periods of time is what makes PFAS risky.
“The sun itself is not inherently bad, but there are precautions people need to take when it comes to getting too much sun exposure,” Jackson said. “That could be in the form of suntan lotion or wearing a hat. This is kind of the same principle when it comes to PFAS in the water."
Ingestion is the problem, not skin contact, said Matt Maas, the division manager of the public water supply at Illinois’ EPA. That’s why residents don’t need to filter water for laundry, for example.
You can’t boil PFAS out because the chemical has a higher boiling point than water, said John Scott, a contaminant researcher at the University of Illinois.
Renters in Collinsville also asked if they or their landlord should cover the cost of a filter. Right now, there is no city ordinance that requires a filter, so the city doesn’t have a definitive answer. Residents should have that conversation with their landlord, Jackson said.
As of now, the renovation of its water treatment facility to remove the problematic chemicals before they reach residents’ homes will cost more than $10 million, but that number could change, Hunt, the engineer, said.
The preliminary engineering report being conducted right now will present two fixes for the city council to pursue: granular activated carbon or ion exchange treatment. Both act like a sponge to soak up the problematic chemicals.
The carbon option is more costly up front but less expensive to maintain, the ion treatment is cheaper up front and more expensive to maintain, Hunt said.
A little less than half of the renovations will be paid for by the city’s portion of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit against private companies that manufactured PFAS. So far, the city has received a small fraction of the $4.86 million settlement. Troy Turner, the city’s public works director, said they don’t know when exactly they will receive the rest, but it will be used for the upgrades.
“The last thing that we want to do is to pass this burden off on the people who are essentially victims of this pollution — rather than the perpetrators,” Crawford said.
It’s the hope of the city and Illinois EPA that the remaining costs will be covered by the state’s portion of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as a grant. IEPA has $2 billion left to allocate over the next few years — most of which will be allocated for replacing lead pipes.
The more than $5 million in remaining costs will be submitted to the IEPA well before a March 2026 deadline, Hunt said.
Illinois’s EPA will make a determination on the application next spring or early summer. If approved, the project could be funded by the start of July, said Nidhan Singh, a fund manager with the state agency.
The project is expected to be designed over the next two years, to start construction in 2028 and to be completed by 2029, when the EPA’s new regulations will start to be enforced.
