Michael Nicholls 
🏆 Congratulations to Anita Doig and the team at WGA for award-winning research that challenges how we view laterite geology in northern Australia. Lateritic regolith profiles often look solid and impermeable.
💧 Imagine your entire community relying solely on bottled water for four years. That has been the daily reality for Kiwirrkurra, Western Australia’s most remote Aboriginal community.
Congratulations to Sarah Ortbal and Metrohm for exposing the scale of PFAS contamination. Their work demonstrates that standard targeted testing misses up to 96% of the fluorinated organic load.
A $220 million market signal suggests the time for merely monitoring legacy contamination is ending. French environmental services firm Veolia has announced the acquisition of Australian remediation specialist @Enviropacific.
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A major legislative shift overseas has redefined who pays for legacy PFAS contamination. The State of Wisconsin has enacted a $125 million funding package that includes an innocent landowner exemption.
⚖️ Operating within a NSW declared catchment area will soon carry higher legal and financial risk. The NSW Government has finalised public consultation for the proposed Water NSW Regulation 2026.
📊 A regulatory update has increased the PFOS freshwater guideline value by nearly two orders of magnitude, yet it introduces a strict new requirement for site assessments. Water Quality Australia has published the final ANZG Toxicant Default Guideline Values for PFOS.
🧯 53,000 litres of concentrated legacy AFFF have been mineralised into clean water. The Ohio EPA has deployed commercial-scale supercritical water oxidation to destroy stockpiled PFAS firefighting foam from 118 regional fire departments.
♻️ High-visibility workwear is essential for site safety, but its water-resistant coating makes disposal a compliance liability. Historically, these heavily treated industrial textiles have been difficult to process.
🏛️ A $1.5 billion legal claim and a United Nations intervention have altered the stakes for legacy contamination. Traditional Owners from the Banjima nation have escalated the fight to remediate Wittenoom to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.