PFAS in Colorado drinking water

Colorado's best-documented PFAS problem sits in a fairly small footprint of El Paso County, just south of Colorado Springs, where the communities of Fountain, Security, and Widefield share a contaminated groundwater source. For decades, aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) sprayed during firefighter training at Peterson Air Force Base and the neighboring airport carried per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances down into the Widefield Aquifer. That aquifer supplies drinking water to roughly 90,000 people, which is why a training practice at one installation became a public-health story for an entire region.

The sampling numbers are what made the situation impossible to ignore. Every one of the 32 wells run by the Security Water & Sanitation District came back above the EPA's 2016 health advisory of 70 parts per trillion (ppt), and a single well was recorded at 1,370 ppt (EWG, PFAS Project Lab, CBS Colorado). As part of the response, the Air Force contributed about $9 million toward water treatment in Fountain. For years Colorado leaned on that 70 ppt advisory figure for PFOS, PFOA, and PFNA rather than writing a tougher enforceable rule of its own.

What changed under the 2024 federal limits

Everything shifted in 2024, when the EPA issued the first national drinking-water limits for PFAS that carry the force of law. Two compounds, PFOA and PFOS, are each capped at 4 ppt, while PFNA, PFHxS, and GenX chemicals each sit at 10 ppt. Colorado now enforces those figures. Because 4 ppt is more than seventeen times stricter than the old 70 ppt advisory, wells around Fountain and Security that once looked merely elevated may now land clearly over the legal line.

Removing PFAS at the tap and the whole house

Three proven technologies stand up to PFAS. Granular activated carbon (GAC) grabs the longer-chain molecules onto its enormous internal surface and is a natural fit for a point-of-entry filter that treats the whole house. Anion exchange resin works electrostatically, pulling in the negatively charged PFAS ions and frequently holding the shorter-chain compounds that carbon lets slip. Reverse osmosis (RO) squeezes water through a tight membrane and shines as an under-sink point-of-use unit.

Colorado buyers usually decide based on where they want protection. A whole-house GAC or anion system cleans water for showers, laundry, and cooking at every fixture, while an RO unit adds a final polishing pass for the water you drink and freeze. Combining a point-of-entry filter with an under-sink RO is a common El Paso County setup.

Test before you treat

PFAS leave no taste, color, or odor, so a lab test is the only honest way to learn your number. Request your utility's most recent PFAS results, and if your home draws from a private well near Fountain, Security, or Widefield, send a sample to a certified laboratory that reports individual compounds down to single-digit ppt. Then size the equipment to the readings you actually get, not to a worst-case rumor. Keep in mind that carbon and resin exhaust with use and membranes wear, so periodic retesting and media changes keep a system honest.

Choosing the right setup for a Colorado home

Colorado adds a few practical wrinkles worth planning around. At Front Range elevations water is often hard and can carry sediment or seasonal turbidity, and both conditions shorten the life of PFAS media, so a sediment pre-filter or a softener ahead of a carbon vessel frequently protects your investment. Households on the Widefield Aquifer that already know their history may want to move straight to a whole-house catalytic-carbon or anion system sized for their measured load, then finish with an under-sink RO for drinking and ice. Homes on municipal supply that show non-detects on the latest report may reasonably start with point-of-use RO alone and reassess when new data arrive. Match the capacity to your daily gallons and your compound-by-compound numbers, keep a retest on the calendar, and change media on schedule; that combination is what keeps treatment ahead of a slowly rising PFAS reading rather than chasing it.

Not sure where to start? Our PFAS water filter removal guide walks through choosing the right treatment for your test results.