Who Pays to Get Forever Chemicals Out of Drinking Water? It Could Be You

Officials say settlements with 3M and DuPont won’t cover all of the costs of building new filtration systems

Photo: Wausau, Wis., says it is in line to get about $65 million from PFAS settlements before attorneys’ fees.

Forever chemicals have shown up in drinking water across the country. Now they are appearing in homeowners’ soaring utility bills.

Water systems are spending millions of dollars to filter out PFAS, the long-lasting compounds commonly known as forever chemicals, which have been linked to cancer and other health problems. 

Earlier this year 3M, DuPont and two other companies agreed to proposed class-action settlements of contamination claims for up to $13.7 billion, but some water providers are already passing the cleanup cost on to customers.

Communities including Hawthorne, N.J., Wellesley, Mass., and Wausau, Wis., have boosted their water rates by 13% to more than 50% after the discovery of PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, led them to build new filtration systems or buy water from other sources. 

Jim Wagner, a Wausau laundry owner, said he lost customers when he raised the price of using a washing machine by 50 cents. Wausau resident Jaime Pittsley said his water bills have more than doubled even though his family switched to drinking bottled water.

“I don’t feel that the residents should be taking the brunt of the cost for this,” Pittsley said. “I think these companies definitely should be footing the bill.”

Wausau, a city of 40,000 in central Wisconsin, is in line to get about $65 million from the settlements before attorneys’ fees, but it still faces the potential for stricter regulations and further cleanup costs, Mayor Katie Rosenberg said.

She said it is too soon to talk about cutting water rates. “That’d be a discussion that we would be able to have more robustly once we have some of those dollars in our account,” said Rosenberg.

3M said it agreed with plaintiffs’ attorneys that the settlement is the right way to move forward. DuPont and two related companies included in the lawsuits, Corteva and Chemours, issued a statement Dec. 22 saying they remain in favor of the settlement.  

In recent years hundreds of municipalities have sued PFAS manufacturers, alleging that the companies knew that the chemicals would contaminate aquifers. The companies, while seeking to settle the litigation, say PFAS haven’t been shown […]

Full article: www.wsj.com