The city of Eau Claire in western Wisconsin had to shut down nearly half of its wells in 2021 after finding “forever chemicals” in its water supply.
The wells are close to the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport, where fire fighting foams containing PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, had been used, according to the city.
Now, Eau Claire is building a $20 million filtration facility to address the issue, which it expects to open next year.
Part of the funding for that project will come from $12 million in settlements the city reached with PFAS manufacturers in 2023. But the settlement dollars the city expects to receive won’t cover the full project, said City Attorney Steve Nick.
“I would like to have seen more funds come in from this settlement, but it's still a substantial settlement,” he said. “The nature of compromise is usually you don't get everything you're looking for.”
Cities across the Midwest and Great Plains are in line for millions of settlement dollars meant to help clean up PFAS from their water supplies. The class action settlements with companies including 3M, DuPont and Tyco includes hundreds of water systems across the country.
Some cities have started to receive payments already, such as Eau Claire and West Des Moines, Iowa. Others are filing new lawsuits to help pay for removal efforts.
But the settlement dollars often fall short of the costs to eliminate the chemicals, city leaders say. And sometimes that means cities are relying on customers to cover the gaps.
Burden of removing PFAS from drinking water
PFAS are man-made chemicals that don’t break down and build up in the environment and the body. They increase risks of health problems like cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dave Strifling, director of the Water Law & Policy Initiative at Marquette University Law School, said the primary way people ingest PFAS is through drinking water. He said public water systems are the ones primarily responsible for delivering safe drinking water to their communities.
“PFAS tends to pass through our water treatment processes, unless you upgrade them to a whole new level of engineering technology,” Strifling said.
Kyle Burton is the field operations director for the drinking and groundwater program at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He said there are some proven treatment techniques to remove PFAS from drinking water, but they’re often “very costly.”
“Treatment systems for large communities can be in the tens of millions of dollars to install,” he said.
And the communities facing those high costs aren’t responsible for the pollution they’re fighting to keep out of the drinking water, said Christina Murphy, general manager of West Des Moines Water Works.
“It's absolutely frustrating,” she said. “We're not responsible for the contamination, yet we're required to meet the drinking water standards.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will set new drinking water limits for two widely studied PFAS chemicals at 4 parts per trillion, giving water systems until 2031 to comply. The original deadline was 2029, and had previously planned to set limits for four more chemicals.
Last year, the EPA estimated that between 6% and 10% of the 66,000 public water systems subject to the rule would have to take action to meet the standards.
Chemical companies face litigation
Public water systems have taken PFAS manufacturers to court after detecting forever chemicals in their water systems, reaching nationwide class action settlements with the companies totaling more than $12 billion.
The largest is with 3M, which agreed to pay between $10.3 and $12.5 billion. DuPont and its spinoffs, Tyco Fire Products and BASF contributed smaller amounts.
In most cases, Strifling said the goal is to use the settlement funds to refit water treatment plants with new PFAS removal technologies.
In a statement, a Tyco spokesperson said the company’s $750 million settlement agreement with public water systems has been approved by a court and an independent settlement administrator is processing claims and will make payments to water systems that were approved to receive funds.
“Tyco has fully funded the settlement and the court has dismissed the relevant cases against Tyco,” the spokesperson said. “Tyco resolved these cases to avoid the expense and uncertainty of litigation, and it does not constitute an admission of liability.”
Beyond the cases that have already settled, there are still active lawsuits against manufacturers of firefighting foam that contain PFAS. As of Sept. 2, there were more than 12,000 claims in a federal lawsuit against 3M and other companies, according to King Law, a law firm based in Rochester, New York.
In Missouri, Kansas City announced last month that it would file a lawsuit seeking damages related to environmental contamination caused by PFAS chemicals found in firefighting foam used at municipal sites.
“Kansas City seeks to ensure that the expenses of PFAS removal do not fall on taxpayers or the travelling public, but instead on the companies that profited while hiding the known dangers of PFAS,” a city spokesperson wrote in a statement.
Settlement dollars often aren’t enough
In Iowa, Des Moines Water Works has received notice that it will be awarded $9.7 million from a PFAS settlement with 3M, which is lower than initial estimates, according to Amy Kahler, CEO and general manager of Des Moines Water Works.
“These funds will help us continue investing in safe, clean water for the people of Des Moines while ensuring that those responsible for contamination contribute to the solution,” Kahler said in a statement.
Meanwhile, West Des Moines Water Works expects to receive a little more than $3 million across settlements with several PFAS manufacturers, according to Murphy.
Murphy said West Des Moines joined the class action lawsuit to recoup costs of either drilling more wells or investing in treatment systems. She said the water system has detected PFAS in a number of its shallow wells and is trying to identify new wells that are not contaminated.
“Unfortunately, that's proving to be a challenge,” Murphy said. “We've kind of struck out twice on trying to find wells that are PFAS-free.”
If the water system cannot find new PFAS-free water sources, she said it will have to “go back to the drawing board” and look at potential treatment options, “which is certainly going to cost a lot more money.”
She said the roughly $3 million in settlement funds will help West Des Moines drill some wells, but it’s not going to be much help if the utility has to look at treatment options.
“That money will be dedicated to any source water improvements, or even treatment improvements, if that's where we need to go,” she said. “But it will not fund 100% of the costs that we’re going to incur here.”
Some communities opt out
In Texas, Fort Worth and Dallas rejected two class action settlements in 2023 with 3M and DuPont and water systems across the country. Viewing the settlements as “inadequate,” the two cities opted out to pursue their own lawsuits against the chemical manufacturers, according to the Texas Tribune.
Hastings, Minnesota, where PFAS was present in all six city wells, also chose to opt out of nationwide settlements with 3M and DuPont.
Hastings Public Works Director Ryan Stempski said the city opted out because it calculated that it would receive $3 million to $4 million from the settlement, which is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the nearly $69 million in costs the city faces to build three PFAS treatment plants.
Instead, Hastings is trying to use settlement funds from a lawsuit Minnesota settled with 3M in 2018 for $850 million. So far, Stempski says Hastings has secured about $14 million after tying PFAS in one of its six wells to a nearby 3M plant, and it’s working with the state to connect the others.
“We haven't crossed over that hump yet,” he said. “Those are the studies going on currently. But we believe that through continuous efforts … that we can get to those interconnectivities and continue to get more funds for Hastings.”
The city hopes to get all three treatment plants up and running by 2029. Stempski says the first plant is expected to begin construction this month.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.