OWASA — the Orange Water and Sewer Authority that serves Chapel Hill and Carrboro — publishes one of the most detailed PFAS testing programs of any utility in North Carolina. The most recent report documents 11 PFAS compounds detected in raw source water from Cane Creek Reservoir and University Lake, and 9 of those still present in finished drinking water after the utility's standard treatment process.
That's the published number from OWASA itself. It's not a marketing claim, it's not a worst-case estimate, and it's not pulled from an outside group. If you live in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, or anywhere served by OWASA — UNC's main campus, Meadowmont, Southern Village, the Lawrence Road area — those 9 compounds are in the water at your kitchen tap.
What PFAS are and why they matter
PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They're a family of synthetic chemicals — over 12,000 of them — used in non-stick coatings, food packaging, firefighting foam, and industrial manufacturing since the 1940s. The carbon-fluorine bond at their core does not break down in nature, which is why they get called forever chemicals.
The health concerns come from decades of human and animal studies. The EPA's current published findings link several PFAS compounds to:
- Immune system suppression (reduced vaccine response in children)
- Hormone disruption affecting thyroid, reproductive, and developmental systems
- Elevated cholesterol
- Increased risk of kidney and testicular cancers
- Liver damage at chronic low-dose exposure
- Reduced infant birth weight
The science isn't settled at every dose — that's why the EPA's enforcement limits are so low. The agency set 4 parts per trillion as the maximum contaminant level for PFOA and PFOS, and 10 ppt for several other compounds, with enforcement beginning in 2027.
OWASA's published testing data
OWASA runs PFAS testing on raw source water (the reservoirs before treatment) and finished water (what leaves the plant heading to customers). Both data sets are published in the utility's annual water-quality reports and quarterly testing summaries.
Raw source water: 11 PFAS compounds detected, including PFBS, PFHxA, PFHpA, PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFBA, and several others at trace levels. The reservoirs are fed by surface runoff from a watershed that includes agricultural land, residential areas with firefighting-foam contamination history, and atmospheric deposition.
Finished water: 9 of those 11 compounds remain after OWASA's conventional treatment. The treatment process — coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation, sand filtration, free chlorine disinfection — was not designed to remove PFAS. It removes sediment, kills pathogens, and clears organics, but the PFAS compounds pass through largely unchanged.
The detection levels are below the EPA's current 4 ppt enforcement limit for most compounds. But several are in the 2 to 8 ppt range, which means OWASA will need to add advanced treatment to comply with the 2027 deadline.
EPA 2027 enforcement and what OWASA is doing about it
The EPA finalized the first federal PFAS drinking-water limits in April 2024. Compliance is required by 2027 for utilities serving the population sizes OWASA falls into. Utilities that exceed the limits in monitoring data must install treatment to bring them into compliance or face enforcement.
OWASA has been transparent about the timeline. The utility's published 5-year capital improvement plan includes advanced treatment options — granular activated carbon (GAC), ion exchange, or membrane filtration — at the Cane Creek and Jones Ferry treatment facilities. The estimated cost runs in the tens of millions and gets passed through to rates.
Realistically, the centralized treatment upgrade is a 3-5 year project from approval to commissioning. Between now and then, the PFAS levels in finished water won't change. If you have a baby, a pregnancy, or anyone in the household where chronic PFAS exposure is a concern, the gap between now and 2027+ is the window where home-level treatment matters most.
Point-of-use RO at the kitchen sink
The reliable home-level fix for PFAS in OWASA water is a point-of-use reverse osmosis (RO) unit installed under the kitchen sink. RO membranes remove 95-99% of PFAS compounds — well below the EPA's 4 ppt limit — along with lead, fluoride, nitrates, and the rest of the dissolved-solid load.
Look for NSF/ANSI 58 certification on the RO membrane (general RO performance) and NSF P473 certification (specific PFAS reduction). The P473 protocol is the one to verify — it's the standard the manufacturer uses to prove the unit actually removes PFOA and PFOS to detection limits.
Installation is a 1-2 hour job for a licensed plumber. The unit lives in the cabinet under the sink, taps the cold-water line, and feeds a small designer faucet next to the main one. Filter changes run about $80-100/year for pre-filters, with the RO membrane replaced every 2-3 years.
For a family of four, an under-sink RO covers all drinking water, cooking water, baby formula, ice, and coffee. That's where PFAS exposure actually happens. Showering and washing dishes in chloramine + PFAS finished water is a much lower exposure pathway than drinking it.
What whole-home carbon filtration does and doesn't do
A whole-home carbon filter — the kind that sits at your main water line — removes chlorine, chloramine, taste, and odor reliably. It also removes a fraction of PFAS, but the reduction is partial and the filter media gets saturated relatively quickly with PFAS bound to it.
If you only install a whole-home carbon filter and skip the kitchen-sink RO, you are improving taste and reducing some exposures but you are not getting drinking-water-grade PFAS removal. The standard RWP bundled system pairs the whole-home filter for the whole-house quality improvements with the point-of-use RO for the kitchen drinking water — that combination is what handles both layers.
If your household isn't ready to install both, the kitchen-sink RO is the higher-impact half. Whole-home filtration is the comfort and taste upgrade. PFAS removal at the drinking-water tap is the health-relevant one.
What to do next
Request a free water report for your Chapel Hill or Carrboro address. We pull OWASA's most recent finished-water testing data — the actual ppt numbers for each PFAS compound at your section of the system — and produce a personalized 4-6 page PDF within 24 hours. No in-home visit, no sales pitch.
If your report shows PFAS levels low enough that you'd rather wait for OWASA's 2027 treatment upgrade, that's a valid call. If you have a pregnancy or a child under 2 in the home, the typical recommendation is to install RO now and not wait. The free report gives you the data to decide.