The facility is located on Neville Island in Allegheny County and handles both hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and nonhazardous materials.
This waste includes spent carbon that has been used to remove organic chemicals and other contaminants such as PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ from wastewater and air emissions produced by Calgon’s customers, as well as from drinking water.
Three Rivers Waterkeeper, represented by Appalachian Mountain Advocates, is challenging the issuance of this permit as written because it does not provide the people of Pennsylvania with adequate or legally required protection from Calgon’s PFAS discharges.
PFAS are toxic to humans, animal life, and the broader ecosystems within which they live.
Because PFAS are resistant to biodegradation, they persist and bioaccumulate in the body for many years after digestion, which is why they are often referred to as “forever chemicals.”
Exposure to PFAS increases the risk of certain cancers, including prostate, kidney, and testicular cancer, and may produce a variety of adverse reproductive, developmental, or hormonal effects.
Other health impacts include increased cholesterol levels, heightened risk of obesity, and a reduced ability to fight infections.
Research continues to demonstrate these and other health impacts of PFAS exposure, “even at very low levels.”
Located at the headwaters of the Ohio River just downstream of Pittsburgh, the Calgon facility on Neville Island is one of two the company uses to handle hazardous wastes, including the spent carbon that the company reactivates and uses in many of its own products and services.
Among many other industrial applications, activated carbon is necessary for the PFAS treatment systems that Calgon sells to companies and municipal authorities across the country, from which it also collects spent carbon.
Despite its experience in the water treatment business, Calgon is not preventing the PFAS it brings into Allegheny County from entering the Ohio River, where those chemicals will endanger the dozens of downstream communities that draw their water either directly from the river or from adjacent wells.
Calgon identifies as the “activated carbon industry forerunner” with “cutting-edge purification systems for drinking water, wastewater, odor control, pollution abatement, and a variety of industrial and commercial manufacturing processes.”
However, in the spring of 2025, Three Rivers Waterkeeper documented PFAS in wastewater coming from three Calgon’s outfalls and found 24 kinds of PFAS being discharged, total PFAS concentrations of 252.1 ppt (parts per trillion) 209.6 ppt, and 360.6 ppt.
The most prominent kind of PFAS was HFPO-DA, one of the GenX chemicals used by the Chemours Company, a facility from which Calgon accepts materials. The Waterkeeper recorded at 167.3 ppt in one outfall.
These results were consistent with the DEP documentation of PFAS discharges in Calgon’s recent water discharge permit renewal application.
The PFAS and related chemicals that are part of the permit are only “monitor and report” - meaning that there is no actual limit to their discharges.
Put simply, this is a permit to discharge any amount of PFAS into our source drinking water without accountability.
“The levels of PFAS around this facility were the highest we ever documented in our region by us, and that includes a known spill of PFAS contaminants,” explained Heather Hulton VanTassel, executive director of Three Rivers Waterkeeper. “We can’t let this level of toxic contamination be released into our drinking water sources. Now is the time to take action before it’s too late.”
“No amount of PFAS contamination in our source drinking water is safe,” Hulton VanTassel said. “But this level is unacceptable, and Calgon must be held accountable.”
The Three Rivers Waterkeeper protects the Allegheny, Monongahela and the upper Ohio River, which make up the headwaters of the Ohio River Basin.
The Ohio River starts at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers in Pittsburgh, PA and charts a course across a vast section of the Midwest before flowing into the Mississippi River.
Its watershed covers 205,000 square miles across 15 states, from New York to Mississippi.
While the Ohio River forms the border of five states, ultimately it unites 30 million people—five million of whom rely on it for drinking water.
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[Posted: August 14, 2025] PA Environment Digest
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