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CHIPS Communities United
CHIPS Communities United
Forever Ends Here:

Don’t let AI poison our water

Clean water is more important than Big Tech’s profits.
Take Action Now!

The AI boom is driving a proliferation of semiconductor factories and data centers across the country. While a handful of corporations get richer, families are being asked to accept more pollution in their communities.

One of the biggest threats is PFAS—toxic “forever chemicals” that don’t break down and can build up in our bodies and our water. They have been linked to cancer, hormone disruption, and reproductive problems. The chemical industry knew about these dangers decades ago. Instead of protecting the public, it kept making PFAS because it was profitable. Now these chemicals have spread into rivers, lakes, groundwater, and drinking water across America.

We shouldn’t have to choose between technological progress and clean water.

If companies want to profit from the AI boom, they should be responsible for cleaning up any PFAS they use. Families deserve safe drinking water, honest accountability, and strong protections—not more toxic pollution.

Clean water is a right. No industry should be allowed to take it away.

Semiconductor factories and data centers are spearheading a surge in PFAS pollution

Semiconductor production and data center proliferation are leading to a huge increase in PFAS manufacturing.

Demand is growing for semiconductors, also known as microchips, which are used in smart phones, electric vehicles, and computers, as well as data centers and military defense systems. The semiconductor industry uses many PFAS compounds to fabricate microchips. Whenever researchers have studied the wastewater from chip factories, it is brimming with the toxic compounds. 

There is no public data on PFAS releases from data centers, but we know some data centers use thousands of gallons of PFAS coolants. These chemicals probably enter the environment throughout their life cycle, which includes production, storage, transportation, operations, reclamation, and disposal.

The chemical industry uses semiconductors and data centers to justify its continuing production of and pollution from PFAS factories.

Virtually no regulations prevent data centers or semiconductor makers from releasing PFAS in their wastewater. So whatever poisons they use may end up poisoning us.

The toxic path from the chip factory or data center … to your body

When PFAS-laced wastewater is discharged directly to surface waters, it pollutes our rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater. Eventually, it ends up in our drinking water.

Most semiconductor facilities send their wastewater to local sewage treatment plants (publicly owned treatment works or POTWs). But these facilities rarely have the capacity to treat PFAS contamination, meaning these toxic chemicals end up in our rivers, lakes, and streams. 

Sometimes PFAS compounds are screened out in the process of wastewater treatment and combined with other waste as sewage sludge or biosolids. Sewage utilities either send the toxic slop to a landfill, where it may leach into the groundwater, or distribute it to farmers to apply to their fields, where it can poison farm animals, crops, farmers, and consumers.

Forever Ends Here:

We’re working to stop Big Tech from polluting our waters. Join us!

Forever Ends Here focuses on using Clean Water Act wastewater discharge permits (also known as National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System or NPDES permits) to control PFAS within semiconductor wastewater. These permits are legally enforceable and can include pollutant limits, monitoring requirements, and reporting rules.

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Our Strategy
  • Expose PFAS water pollution. Forever Ends Here aims to increase awareness of the problem of PFAS from semiconductor facilities, data centers, and other facilities.
  • Demand polluter responsibility. We’re calling for zero discharge of PFAS. You use it, you clean it up. Chip factories, data centers, and other facilities that use PFAS must clean up their own messes. 
  • Demand action now! The US EPA recommends that cities, states, and treatment works take action, even though there are no regulations yet requiring them to limit PFAS in industrial wastewater. In 2022, the EPA informed these entities that they currently have the authority under the Clean Water Act to require polluters to monitor their wastewater and take steps to reduce or eliminate PFAS contamination. States and local authorities should not wait for EPA to finalize additional rules limiting PFAS in water pollution.
  • Use permitting to stop PFAS contamination. This is what permits are for! Anytime an industrial user discharges wastewater to a sewage treatment plant, the facility issues a wastewater pretreatment permit, which typically requires the polluter to remove substances that could interfere with the sewage clean-up process. If written correctly, these permits also provide an opportunity to measure, reduce, and eliminate PFAS from entering the water system.
  • Monitor wastewater for PFAS. If wastewater is entering our water system, we need to know what’s in there, and that means regular monitoring for toxic forever chemicals. Most companies are not required to test their water for PFAS, so any testing is a good start. The most commonly used method for testing wastewater (EPA’s method 1633A) only looks for 40 PFAS compounds. But there are more than 14,000 different PFAS chemicals in use today. Companies need to add other monitoring methods that deliver an accurate snapshot of the total amount of PFAS.
  • Require treatment to destroy PFAS; don’t just move it around. Skimming off persistent toxic chemicals doesn’t work: it just moves the hazardous substances somewhere else, for someone else to deal with. Several technologies can destroy PFAS; we call on chip factories and data centers to use those methods to eliminate the toxics after use.
  • Don’t burn PFAS! Incineration doesn’t make PFAS go away; it creates new toxic chemicals and spreads them in our environment.
  • Make the information public. We have a right to know what’s entering our waterways. Monitoring results should be public – easily available online without needing to file a public records request.

Join us and get PFAS out of your waters!

Are you concerned about PFAS contamination from local data centers or semiconductor facilities?

  • Attend CHIPS Communities United’s Forever Ends Here meetings. We meet monthly. Email brenda@chipscommunitiesunited.org to learn more.
  • Talk to your elected representatives. City, county, or state officials make decisions about how wastewater is regulated, so ultimately, they have the power to stop data centers or chip factories from polluting our waters. 
  • Research the wastewater permit for your local chip plant or data center. Most likely the facility has a pretreatment permit with the local sewage utility. Staff at these facilities are usually happy to chat with you by phone or email and tell you about permits, though you may need to file a public records request to get your hands on the permit itself.
  • File public comments requesting a stronger permit. (For a few examples, see CCU’s comments on the permits for the Oak Orchard treatment facility in Syracuse NY, TSMC in Camas WA, and Analog Devices in Camas WA.)
Our Demands

CHIPS Communities United calls on state agencies and local sewage treatment authorities to use wastewater pretreatment permits to reduce the flow of PFAS into public waters. Specifically, we demand:

Recommendation 1:
Require data centers and semiconductor companies to develop a PFAS Action Plan.

The Plan should require companies to fully disclose all PFAS used in all processes, describe measures to minimize PFAS use, and disclose treatment and destruction efforts. PFAS Action Plans should require: 

  • A robust initial sampling of PFAS, using both targeted and non-targeted methods. (See below under Recommendation 2.)
  • Full disclosure of all PFAS used in all processes. Companies should provide a comprehensive inventory of all PFAS used in manufacturing processes and identify the ways the facility uses, generates, or releases PFAS. Comprehensive disclosure of all PFAS uses would improve transparency and help inform appropriate monitoring and treatment requirements.
  • A thorough description of PFAS minimization and treatment efforts, including product substitution, off-site disposal, reuse, treatment, separation of waste streams, and destruction. Permitting agencies can and should require industrial dischargers to demonstrate that effective, facility-wide PFAS treatment is being used prior to wastewater being discharged to treatment works (or surface waters). 
  • Description for how residuals are managed, treated, or disposed of. 
  • There is precedent for this approach. Clean Water Services in Washington County, OR requires seven semiconductor companies to submit a PFAS Management Plan, and Washington State’s Department of Ecology requires a short-term PFAS Sampling and Analysis Plan for Analog Devices.
Recommendation 2:
Monitor wastewater quarterly, using EPA’s Method 1633A.

Testing wastewater periodically is the only way to know if chip factories or data centers are releasing PFAS into the environment. EPA Method 1633A has been approved by the US government for testing agencies and should be administered quarterly. This method tests for 40 PFAS compounds.

Recommendation 3:
Monitor wastewater annually using additional analytical methods that measure other non-targeted PFAS compounds.

There are thousands of types of PFAS, of which over one hundred PFAS are known to be used by the semiconductor industry, and new PFAS are constantly being introduced. PFAS are highly mobile, transforming under certain conditions from one form to another, breaking down into component parts, and reformulating in new and unpredictable ways. 

Testing for just 40 compounds, therefore, is grossly inadequate for identifying the full suite of PFAS in semiconductor wastewater discharge. Studies have found that EPA Method 1633A detects less than 10% of the total PFAS. 

The diagram below illustrates just how inadequate Method 1633A is for capturing the universe of PFAS in wastewater.

Source: Ifeoluwa Grace Idowu, et al, A systematic review of methods for the analysis of total per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), Science of The Total Environment, Vol 967 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.178644.

Therefore we call for additional monitoring using additional analytical methods, designed to measure the total quantity of PFAS in wastewater. These may include:

  • Additional targeted testing for all unique PFAS identified in the manufacturing process by the PFAS Action Plan 
  • Identification and quantification of ultra short-chain PFAS 
  • Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (19F NMR) to determine total organic fluorine, total polymeric fluorine, and total inorganic fluorine as a percent of total fluorine, in addition to providing information on chemical structure
  • EPA Method 1621 to determine total Adsorbable Organic Fluorine (AOF)
  • Extractable Organic Fluorine (EOF)
  • Total Organic Precursors (TOP) assay
  • A non-targeted analysis using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) to characterize, semi-quantify, and identify PFAS compounds not detected by targeted analysis or measures of total organic fluorine

These tests should be performed by an independent laboratory and combined into an annual report.

Recommendation 4:
Establish a goal of zero discharge of PFAS.

Permitting agencies should call for industrial dischargers to eliminate PFAS discharge. Some wastewater permits specify a goal of zero mercury discharge, for example: the same practice should be applied to PFAS. Achieving this goal will call for permitting agencies to use their existing authority to place limits on PFAS in industrial effluent.

Managing PFAS through limits for one chemical at a time will take years, delay critical protections, and may encourage the creation of similarly harmful alternatives. Given the persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic nature of PFAS, industrial users should not be allowed to discharge any PFAS chemicals into our waters. 

The cost of removing and destroying all PFAS released into the environment would exceed $106 trillion – more than the entire world’s economic GDP. Minimizing the use of PFAS and stopping PFAS discharges at the source control is the most effective means of controlling PFAS pollution. Every additional release of PFAS builds up in the local, regional and global environment, leading to contamination of drinking water supplies, fish, wildlife, livestock, and in humans. It is especially important to control PFAS where it is used.

Recommendation 5:
Require the use of destruction technologies to eliminate PFAS from wastewater.

Some semiconductor factories have begun to use reverse osmosis or granular activated charcoal to remove PFAS from wastewater. But these processes do not destroy PFAS; instead, they generate a concentrate containing high levels of PFAS that must be transported off-site for disposal, posing continued danger to: 

  • Workers who handle these wastes
  • Communities that the waste travels through
  • Neighbors of waste disposal sites, often sited near communities of color and low-income communities
  • Ground water and farm land if waste ends up in landfills where it can leach into the aquifer

Industrial dischargers of PFAS-containing wastewater, therefore, should be required to use treatment methods that destroy PFAS. 

A growing variety of technologies exist which are capable of destroying PFAS (breaking the C-F bond). These include:

Surface plasma

Supercritical water oxidation (SCWO)

Hydrothermal alkaline treatment (HALT)

Electrochemical oxidation

Recommendation 6:
PFAS Action Plans and all monitoring data should be publicly available online.

Public access to PFAS Action Plans and monitoring data ensures transparency, accountability, and public trust. Timely posting will build public trust in the effectiveness of minimization and treatment efforts and allow for the early detection of emerging issues.