"This is not an immediate risk. If it had been, you would have been notified immediately."
That line has gone out to Palmerton Municipal Authority customers at least four times since June 2024, printed at the bottom of a water quality notice about PFOS and PFOA levels in the borough's drinking water. Sellers keep asking whether they need to say something about the water situation before they list. The borough already answered that question. It just answered it in the mail, not in a conversation.
The real questions left in Palmerton right now are narrower and more useful: what does that paper trail actually cover, what happens if you're on a private well instead of municipal service, and how do you describe a treatment timeline that is genuinely improving without overstating where it stands. Those are the three things worth getting right before you sign anything.
The Paper Trail Every PMA Customer Already Has
In May 2024, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection notified the EPA that PFOS and PFOA levels in Palmerton Municipal Authority's water supply exceeded the federal maximum contaminant level. PMA mailed its first Tier 2 public notice to homeowners on June 3, 2024, telling customers plainly that the system had violated a drinking water standard.
The numbers behind that first letter were specific: PFOS at 48.3 parts per trillion on February 14, 2024, and 49.3 ppt on April 24. PFOA came in at 30.7 ppt and 33.9 ppt on those same dates. Three of PMA's four production wells, the ones that supply roughly 80 percent of Palmerton's water, returned elevated readings. The notices kept coming as quarterly monitoring continued. By the first quarter of 2026, the running annual average at Entry Point 102 stood at 38 ppt for PFOS and 30 ppt for PFOA, with an individual PFOA sample on February 11, 2026 measured at 25.4 ppt.
Anyone who has owned a home on PMA water since mid-2024 has a documented, dated, written record of this situation sitting in a file somewhere, whether they've looked for it or not. That is a different starting point than most contamination stories, where a seller genuinely might not know. Here, the borough did the notifying.
What Pennsylvania's Disclosure Law Actually Asks For
Pennsylvania's Real Estate Seller Disclosure Law, codified at 68 Pa.C.S. §§ 7301 through 7315, requires sellers of one-to-four unit residential property to deliver a written disclosure of known material defects before a buyer signs an agreement of sale. The form covers water supply source and known water issues among other categories. The obligation runs only to what a seller actually knows. Nobody is required to hire an inspector or test water they have no reason to suspect is a problem.
That standard cuts a specific way in Palmerton. If you've received a Code Red or Tier 2 letter from PMA about PFAS levels in your water, you have actual knowledge as defined by the statute, documented in writing, mailed to your address, with dates and numbers attached. The disclosure question isn't a judgment call anymore. It's a matter of locating the letters, or requesting copies from the Municipal Authority if you didn't keep yours, and answering the water-quality line item with what those notices actually said.
Buyers who later discover a seller had these notices and didn't mention them have up to two years after closing to bring a claim under the statute, and a seller who knowingly withheld known information faces liability for actual damages. None of this requires a lawyer to sort out in the ordinary case. It does mean the paperwork should match what was mailed, not a vaguer version of it.
Municipal Water And Private Wells Are Different Conversations
Not every Palmerton-area property sits on PMA service. The EPA's private well testing effort, which started in March 2026, covers Palmerton and neighboring Lower Towamensing Township specifically because private wells fall outside the borough's public notice system entirely. The EPA does not regulate private wells, so there is no equivalent paper trail unless an owner has requested testing.
| Situation | What's already documented | What to do before listing |
|---|---|---|
| On PMA municipal water | Multiple written PFAS notices since June 2024, most recent covering Q1 2026 | Locate your Code Red letters, or request copies directly from Palmerton Municipal Authority |
| Private well in Palmerton or Lower Towamensing Township | Nothing automatic. EPA doesn't test or regulate private wells on its own | Request the free, confidential well test EPA began offering in March 2026, if you haven't already |
| Owned the home since before June 2024 | Same municipal notice history applies for your full ownership period | Pull letters for your full ownership window, not just the most recent one |
The Temporary Fix Lands This Summer. The Permanent Question Doesn't Start Until 2027.
On October 27, 2025, the EPA authorized installation of a groundwater treatment system at PMA's production wells, using its Superfund authority rather than requiring the borough to fund it. The project went out to bid in June 2026, and EPA officials have said installation is targeted for late summer, which puts the system coming online right around now. It's a Granular Activated Carbon system, the same filtering material used in household pitcher filters, housed in shipping containers at the well site and designed to bring PFAS levels below federal limits before water reaches distribution.
That's the accurate, sayable version of "the water is being treated," and it can be stated with a date attached once the system is confirmed operational.
What it isn't is a resolution of the underlying contamination. The EPA's feasibility study for a permanent groundwater treatment system or an alternative water supply doesn't begin until summer 2027, and the agency has said that study alone takes 12 to 24 months. The broader site investigation, tracing how PFAS entered the Superfund site's soil and groundwater in the first place, continues at least through the summer of 2027 as well. A statewide bill to ban PFAS in consumer products has also stalled in the Pennsylvania Senate as of mid-August 2026, with only a handful of legislative session days left before the year's deadline, which is its own signal that this is a multi-year regulatory story rather than a single-season fix.
Overstating either direction creates its own risk in a disclosure conversation. "The water is fine now" isn't accurate while the source investigation is still open. "Nothing has changed" isn't accurate once the treatment system is running. The precise version, treatment operational as of a specific date, source investigation and permanent solution still years out, is the one that holds up if a buyer asks a follow-up question six months after closing.
If You're On A Private Well, The Free Window Is Open Now
The EPA's private well testing in Palmerton and Lower Towamensing Township runs in two free, confidential rounds. For anyone planning to sell a private-well home in the next year, getting tested before listing changes who holds the information and when they get it. A clean result becomes something you can hand a buyer directly instead of something they have to take on faith. A result that needs a response gets routed through EPA's coordination with the well owner and DEP, a separate track from the municipal system's timeline entirely.
A Few Direct Questions
Does the treatment system mean I can tell buyers the water is safe now? Once the system is confirmed operational, you can accurately say the delivered water is being treated to meet federal PFAS limits as of that date. That's different from saying the contamination is resolved, since the source investigation continues well past this year.
I'm on a private well and haven't been tested. Am I required to disclose anything? Pennsylvania's disclosure law covers known conditions, not conditions you have no documented reason to know about. If you haven't tested and have no notice suggesting a problem, there's nothing specific to report on that line item yet, but getting the free EPA test before you list gives you an actual answer instead of an open question during a buyer's due diligence.
Will a lender treat this differently during underwriting? That depends on the individual lender and loan program, and it's worth raising directly with your loan officer if you're financing a purchase in the borough. This isn't something a general market update can answer with certainty for every buyer's situation.
Palmerton's water story is a timeline problem more than a value problem, and timelines are exactly the kind of detail that gets lost between a listing sheet and a closing table. If you're weighing a sale or a purchase here and want someone who's tracked this timeline closely enough to walk you through what your specific documents already say, Cass Chies can help you sort out what you're actually working with. Let's Connect.
