PFAS contamination: €20m investment to treat water from Saint-Louis Agglomération (Bas-Rhin)

A total of €20m to treat PFAS pollution in water destined for the Saint-Louis conurbation (Bas-Rhin) and its 60,000 inhabitants: this is the total investment required in facilities - temporary from 2025, followed by a plant built in 2027 - dedicated to filtering PFAS present in groundwater. This groundwater had been contaminated with PFAS by the fire-fighting foam used until 2017 by firefighters at Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport, located just a few hundred metres away.

"Veolia carried out a systematic analysis of its 2,400 pumping points throughout France back in 2023, revealing that 1% of them had PFAS concentration levels above the standards, including the Saint-Louis pumping points: we shared these figures with our various partners and the local authorities from the outset. Following a prefectoral order restricting consumption, issued in April 2025, we put in place corrective measures, including a mobile treatment unit (MTU), to reduce the levels to less than 0.1 microgram/litre (for 20 PFAS accumulated)," explains Fanny Greffe, Director of the Alsace territory for Veolia Water…