3M Co. announced on June 22 that it will pay at least $10.3 billion to settle lawsuits over contamination of many U.S. public drinking water systems with potentially harmful compounds used in firefighting foam and a host of consumer products.
The deal would compensate water providers for pollution with per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) and is subject to court approval.
The compounds have been detected at varying levels in drinking water around the nation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed in March strict limits on two common types, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid), and said it wanted to regulate four others.
The agreement would settle a case that was scheduled for trial earlier this month involving a claim by Stuart, Florida, one of about 300 communities that have filed similar suits against companies that produced firefighting foam or the PFAS it contained.
3M chairman Mike Roman said the deal was “an important step forward” that builds on the company’s decision in 2020 to phase out PFOA and PFOS and its investments in “state-of-the-art water filtration technology in our chemical manufacturing operations.” The company, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, will halt all PFAS production by the end of 2025, he said in the NPR article.
The settlement would be paid over 13 years and could reach as high as $12.5 billion, depending on how many public water systems detect PFAS during testing that EPA has required in the next three years, according to Dallas-based attorney Scott Summy, one of the lead attorneys for those suing 3M and other manufacturers as reported in the Associated Press article.
The payment would help cover the costs of filtering PFAS from systems where it’s been detected and testing others, he said.
Earlier this month, three other companies — DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc. — reached a $1.18 billion deal to resolve PFAS complaints by about 300 drinking water providers. Several states, airports, firefighter-training facilities, and private well owners also have sued.
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NGWA has long been an industry leader in providing PFAS research, education, and resources to the public and scientific communities. Learn more by visiting NGWA.org/PFAS, which is a complete resource center about the groundwater contaminants featuring a recently updated top-10 facts sheet, a position paper, and more.
Also found there is Groundwater and PFAS: State of Knowledge and Practice, which NGWA published in 2017 and is one of the first PFAS guidance documents to be released. The Association hosted its second conference last year in Westerville, Ohio, focused entirely on PFAS science and remediation.