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Mayor Sean Reardon, second from right, gets a closer look at the system recently installed as part of the city’s water treatment pilot program at Barlett Pond.

Mayor Sean Reardon, second from right, gets a closer look at the system recently installed as part of the city’s water treatment pilot program at Barlett Pond.

NEWBURYPORT — Mayor Sean Reardon and Acting Director of Public Services Jamie Tuccolo recently announced Newburyport is beginning a one-year pilot program exploring a new option to reduce the amount of micropollutants in the city’s water supply.

Cyclopure, Inc. was recommended by Newburyport’s engineering consultant, AECOM, and is conducting testing at no cost. They installed a test system to purify water through a corn-based adsorbent, called Dexsorb, which removes PFAS. PFAS are man-made chemicals that have been used in a wide range of consumer and industrial products and are known as “forever chemicals” because their chemistry keeps them from breaking down under typical environmental conditions.

“PFAS levels are an ongoing concern,” Reardon said in a press release. “We will be watching this pilot program closely as we work toward providing cleaner water in the long term, and further protecting the health and safety of all of our residents.”

Tests will be performed on water from Bartlett Pond, the smallest of the city’s water sources, which has shown sporadic PFAS level spikes above state standards. Bartlett Pond has been offline for more than a year out of an abundance of caution, and the city’s water supply remains in compliance with state standards, according to the city.

On Thursday Reardon toured the site at Bartlett Pond and met with representatives from Cyclopure, including the company’s Chief Executive Officer Frank Cassou, to discuss the program.

“Protecting our water supply is one of our highest priorities, and so we have a lot of projects in the pipeline that are hopefully going to address that,” Reardon said at the site, adding that “any time you can be part of a pilot program that could be new cutting-edge technology ... could help you better protect your water supply in the future.”

Newburyport Water Treatment Plant Superintendent Tom Cusick said the pilot program will be useful in planning for the future.

“This would help us weigh out the options and the cost associated with this treatment versus other treatments, not just for PFAS, but for other things that we may be wanting to treat for — taste and odor and things like that in the plant,” Cusick said.

Cassou said he was excited to be testing their product in Massachusetts, starting with Newburyport.

“The plan is to demonstrate the performance, the capacity and cost effectiveness, then hopefully we’ll scale up from there, but we need to share all the data with DEP to also verify it for them,” Cassou said. “It’s really super that they approved the installation of the pilot under a new technology application.”

The Mass Department of Environmental Protection adopted a strict drinking water standard in October 2020, limiting the quantities of six specific PFAS chemicals to no more than 20 parts per trillion, which is well below the limit set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is 70 parts per trillion.

Consuming water with PFAS above 20 parts per trillion does not mean that adverse effects will occur. The degree of risk depends on the level and the duration of exposure. The drinking water standard assumes that individuals drink only contaminated water, which typically overestimates exposure, and that they are also exposed to PFAS from sources beyond drinking water, such as food. To enhance safety as scientists continue working to study and better understand the health risks posed by exposure to PFAS, several uncertainty factors are additionally applied to account for differences between test animals and humans, and to account for differences between people, according to officials.

This is the first time Cyclopure’s Dexsorb system will be tested in Massachusetts. Should testing prove successful, state approval will give public water systems a new option for mitigating PFAS contamination.

Matt Petry covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email him at: mpetry@northofboston.com.

Matt Petry covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email him at: mpetry@northofboston.com. 

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