Here & Now

How Wisconsin Grapples With PFAS

Zac Schultz:
A week ago today more than 13,000 people were out of power in Madison on one of the hottest days of the year. The power failure was due to a transformer explosion at Madison Gas and Electric downtown. You may have seen dramatic photos like this one. Firefighters battling the electrical blaze with water but also with a type of foam that sometimes contains polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, known as PFAS for short. The foam is very effective at putting out a fire but it’s also an extreme health hazard to humans when the compound finds its way into the soil or groundwater. PFAS contamination is an emerging threat to health and the environment and some call it a crisis that’s not getting enough attention. Tonight we look at two Wisconsin communities that dealing with PFAS contamination in different ways. Marisa Wojcik reports.

Jeff Lamont:
I got the letter in November of 2017.

Marisa Wojcik:
It started with a letter.

Jeff Lamont:
I started having neighbors come to me with a letter saying, “What does this mean?”

Marisa Wojcik:
Did you know what to tell them?

Jeff Lamont:
Yes, I did. Essentially that’s no good.

Marisa Wojcik:
The 2017 letter that Jeff and many residents in and around Marinette received was from Tyco, a company that specializes in fire suppression and are now owned by Johnson Controls. They were asking area residents if they could test their private well water, looking for PFAS.

Jeff Lamont:
They had suspected that there was these compounds leaving their site and that kind of kicked it off.

Marisa Wojcik:
Jeff Lamont is a retired hydrogeologist. During his career he specialized in consulting companies like Tyco when dealing with chemical contamination and clean-up.

Jeff Lamont:
All right.

Marisa Wojcik:
But he’d never seen anything like this.

Jeff Lamont:
And so it was, “Oh, boy. What is this?” and that they’re extremely toxic, you know, even at the parts per trillion level. It was a shock.

Marisa Wojcik:
The chemicals known as PFAS, short for per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are sometimes referred to as forever chemicals because they don’t break down naturally. There are nearly 5,000 of these human-made chemicals and they’re used in a host of consumer and industrial products. But it’s their presence in firefighting foams that’s considered a major source of groundwater contamination.

Jeff Lamont:
This is my home here. And I’m in the center of the plume. I have issues with my water. They were contaminated. This home is contaminated. These people are contaminated.

Marisa Wojcik:
In 2013, Tyco became aware of PFAS on their property at their fire training facility, where they used firefighting foams that contained the forever chemical.

Jeff Lamont:
Once they do their training, they hose all the foam down into the adjacent ditches and the ditches carry it into the lake.

Marisa Wojcik:
PFAS compounds are mobile, persistent and bioaccumulate. Toxicology studies show that prolonged exposure to high levels of PFAS can lead to cancer, low infant birth weights, immune deficiencies and thyroid hormone disruption. Even though PFAS was only discovered in Marinette in 2013, the contamination goes back many years.

Jeff Lamont:
We’re talking decades, probably 50 to 60, yeah.

Chuck Boyle:
Here also Cindy is without a thyroid, too. She had hers removed how many years ago now?

Marisa Wojcik:
Residents are concerned that their health issues could be tied to PFAS exposure, but it’s almost impossible to prove. The chemical is so prolific that every human contains some level of PFAS in their blood. For Chuck and Cindy Boyle, the damage has been done after years of contamination in the area.

Cindy Boyle:
We did everything right. We built a place that we love and they took it all away and they just took all of the choices away from us.

Marisa Wojcik:
PFAS in the environment are unregulated federally except for an EPA health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion. Wisconsin has no rules on the books either. Despite the lack of a current standard, a separate state law governing chemical spills required Tyco to begin investigating and remediating their PFAS contamination, which is why they’re taking action now. Ben Verberg is an engineering consultant with Arcadis, hired by Tyco to help clean up the PFAS contamination.

Ben Verberg:
We are at a location that is known as “Ditch A.”

Marisa Wojcik:
“Ditch A” carries surface water off the Tyco fire training property, the main source of Marinette’s PFAS contamination. They installed a filtration system to help clean PFAS out of water before it flows off of the property and into the bay of Green Bay.

Ben Verberg:
We’ve treated, to date, a little over 15 million gallons of surface water.

Marisa Wojcik:
But many see this as a temporary solution. Marinette’s public drinking water supply pulls from Green Bay. In 2018 they began sampling for PFAS and the drinking water is considered safe. But residents with private well water, particular next door in the town of Peshtigo, were found to be contaminated. John Perkins is the vice president of Environment, Health and Safety for Johnson Controls.

John Perkins:
We feel confident we know that the ultimate solution for the affected residents within the area and the most quickest alternative is the option of running a municipal waterline from the city of Marinette to the affected residents of Peshtigo.

Marisa Wojcik:
For those living on the plume, action should have been taken sooner. Tyco discovered the presence of PFAS on their property in 2013 but didn’t act until 2017.

Jeff Lamont:
All my neighbors drank this water for almost four years longer than they needed to.

Marisa Wojcik:
Tyco maintains they were not aware of the chemicals leaving their property.

John Perkins:
As we’ve said before, we feel and still to this day we do not have any indication of any offsite impacts.

Jeff Lamont:
Well, that’s ridiculous statement to make for somebody that knows how this works. Groundwater flows. And if it spilled on their site, you’re almost rest assured that’s migrated offsite.

Marisa Wojcik:
The DNR takes issue with this as well and it’s been referred to the Department of Justice. Despite frustrations, the DNR has made cleaning up the Marinette and Peshtigo area a priority and steps are being taken. It’s a different story on the other side of the state.

Maria Powell:
So far, nothing.

Marisa Wojcik:
Since 2018, Maria Powell has been investigating the presence of PFAS at the Truax military base next to the city of Madison. Like Marinette, they’ve been testing these foams on the ground since 1970.

Maria Powell:
Right now we know nothing about what’s coming off the base.

Marisa Wojcik:
The DNR has identified the Wisconsin Air National Guard as responsible, but they’ve delegated investigation and clean-up to a nationwide U.S. Air Force program to clean up PFAS.

Maria Powell:
So they’re delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying.

Marisa Wojcik:
A report shows unsafe levels of PFAS in the groundwater on the base. With one sample testing at more than 500 times the health advisory level. But the Wisconsin Air National Guard says the concentrations that have been found on base are in groundwater and do not reflect what the concentration currently found in wells that the Madison Water Utility is testing for. These tests show the highest levels of PFAS to be coming from Madison’s well 15, the one closest to the base. Well 15 was turned off earlier this year and the water utility recently announced there’s no immediate plans to turn it back on. But Maria is concerned about the groundwater as well.

Maria Powell:
Right now, our first priority is protect the people who are the most potentially exposed.

Marisa Wojcik:
Starkweather Creek bisects the base from the Truax Apartments. 24-year-old Touyeng Xiong grew up in the Truax Apartments and remembers playing in the creek, catching crayfish.

Touyeng Xiong:
We used to come here all the time and just throw the football, play Frisbee and of course after you’re done, you’re all nice and sweaty, so you come down to this creek and you take a dip.

Maria Powell:
There are multiple exposures here. And I think while all these debates go on about standards, policies, all that should happen, but there really in my opinion is no excuse not to get more information so that we can know what’s going on, how much PFAS is in the creek, in the fish and especially because in this apartment complex, a lot of families, a lot of people with small children, a lot of people with babies and babies are very, very vulnerable.

Marisa Wojcik:
The DNR assures that an investigation and sampling measures are underway.

Darsi Foss:
The DNR stepped in to try to help and I think there was a suspicion that it was coming from Truax, but we have not, you know, put all those dots and put a line through all those and we are working with the city and the Air National Guard on a surface water study this summer and I’d hate to put up signs and worry people when in fact there isn’t that threat.

Marisa Wojcik:
Regulation of these compounds is complicated. Recently, the DNR announced a first step toward a state standard. It would begin a rule-making process that would establish a maximum groundwater level for the two most hazardous PFAS compounds with a combined limit of 20 parts per trillion. Some are encouraged by this announcement. But some industries are pushing back against that number.

Female announcer:
If adopted, this very restrictive standard will be costly for both industry and taxpayers.

Marisa Wojcik:
The rule-making process can take years and would have to go through legislative approval. With the lack of a federal standard, many are looking at how other states are dealing with PFAS. In the meantime, the DNR is doing what it can. They’re trying to resource up, adding two additional positions to work on PFAS.

Darsi Foss:
I have to say that I don’t know if any of us anticipated that PFAS would be the next big issue.

Marisa Wojcik:
And yet, of public drinking water supplies in Wisconsin, only 90 out of 11,000 have been tested. For Jeff Lamont, a standard is needed.

Jeff Lamont:
We want to protect our children. We want to protect our environment. We need it. It’s that simple.

Zac Schultz:
The agency in charge of regulating PFAS is the Department of Natural Resources. Earlier I sat down with DNR Secretary-designee Preston Cole to talk about PFAS. In his budget proposal, Governor Evers requested five science positions to be restored to the DNR to study PFAS. The Republicans in the legislature gave two positions back. What will those scientists be doing?

Preston Cole:
Well, those two scientists are a down payment on what we actually need. So these scientists will be working on research associated with finding PFAS, this insidious chemical that is in our ecosystem, and coordinating best practices with other scientists working on this chemical, where it is, where it isn’t, from around the region. They’ll be working on, what I call, empirical data research that scientists do to tell us where this chemical is.

Zac Schultz:
Is that more testing in the field for where it may be affecting human or is this testing how it may be affecting fish or other wildlife?

Preston Cole:
Yes and yes. We issued 125 storm water utilities to assist us in finding out where it is and where it isn’t. I’m proud to say the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District is the first to say yes. They’ll be testing their influent and effluent as to where this chemical is coming from. We’ll be able to note where it’s coming from. And then we can work with folks on the ground to see if we can abate that chemical.

Zac Schultz:
There’s a handful of places around the state where we do know it already exists. Some of those are related to Air National Guard bases. It’s most commonly used in firefighting retardant on jet fuel. What would the difference be in finding where else it is? I mean is it simply we don’t know what we don’t know?

Preston Cole:
Well we know that airports that train with this foam may have these chemicals in and around their sites. And again, we’ll have to test around those. Wells that are pulling water from municipal water systems and again, as I mentioned earlier, wastewater treatment plants. Drinking water systems, so whether it’s in your groundwater, close proximity to airports. We’re spending approximately $50,000 with state dollars to survey airports to see if they’ve been using this firefighting foam. So it’s a robust discussion that we’re having with municipal wells, that we’re having with private well owners and of course with airports that use this particular foam.

Zac Schultz:
You mentioned the two scientist positions as a down payment. What’s the difference between having two versus the five you requested in terms of how much you can learn?

Preston Cole:
This research is going to be important because we’ve already been issued the groundwater standard by our Department of Health Services. We still need the drinking water standard and the federal government, the EPA, does not have a federal drinking standard. As well as surface water. So whether it’s fish and aquatics, whether it’s drinking water, those are the standards that these other researchers are going to need to work on. While at the same time we’ve asked the Department of Health Services to weigh in on another 34 PFAS-related chemicals that are probably most likely in our environment. But we need the research.

Zac Schultz:
Now, the one thing we haven’t talked about is private wells. Can individual homeowners test their water for this? Is that feasible economically?

Preston Cole:
They can test for it, but it’s costly. We know that some of the tests that most municipalities test for can run $2,000 for a property owner. There are 1.7 million people in the state of Wisconsin that get their water from 800,000 private drinking wells. Our data shows that only 10% of those wells are being tested. We have to make sure that we can incentivize property owners to test their wells on an annual basis. So we’re working diligently to do that.

Zac Schultz:
So the DNR is working on the rule process to set a standard for the two kind of PFAS at 20 parts per trillion. You’re already getting pushback from some manufacturing lobbyists like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. How much science do you need to have on hand in order to tell people that this is necessary despite whatever cost there may be?

Preston Cole:
Well, you should know this fall will begin that rule-making process. It will be wide open to the public. Those who agree with it will show up and those who have concerns with it will show up. In an earnest conversation with the public, with the requisite research and the requisite data, we believe it’ll land somewhere around 20 parts per trillion because that’s the health standard that the health professionals say. Now, it’s going to be different in other states. But they’re reconciling all of this in their own state jurisdictions. But we’re going to begin that conversation in earnest with the people of the state of Wisconsin and corporate and folks who have a vested interest in clean water.

Zac Schultz:
But the rule-making process has to go through the legislature, correct?

Preston Cole:
Correct.

Zac Schultz:
And typically if WMC doesn’t want something to happen, it doesn’t happen because they have a very close association with Republicans in the legislature. Do you have to convince WMC that this is in everyone’s best interest or how do you get around that potential roadblock that’s out there?

Preston Cole:
Here’s what I will say. Governor Evers led with the year of clean drinking water. On the heels of that you hear Representative Vos with his own committee. I believe there’s not going to be a lot of convincing around this. There’s already been bills introduced around PFAS. Not only from the administration, but certainly from others who — Republican legislators as well. I think WMC has a vested interest in ensuring that we are accountable and we’re accountable to them as well as the public, but we’re also accountable to folks who are in harm’s way relative to this conundrum around PFAS.

Zac Schultz:
In some of the other issues with contaminants in water, whether it’s lead or nitrates or bacteria, there’s usually a pretty bright line between drinking that water and developing an illness of some sort. With PFAS it seems like it’s still not clear how bright that line will be. Are you hoping that the research will make that more clear as to whether someone has a health problem due to contamination?

Preston Cole:
My understanding from our health officials that advise us that there are PFAS chemicals that are directly linked to thyroid cancer as well as cancer itself. So we have skin in the game as it relates to that connectivity. It’s not the DNR Secretary that comes up with that. It is professional health services individuals who get data from, you know, their own research, their own methodology, but also people from around the country who have dealt with this on the landscape. Whether it’s lead, whether it’s nitrates, or whether it is PFAS, these emergent contaminants, our drinking water systems in Wisconsin are under threat. We have to act and we have to act now.

Zac Schultz:
Before this position, you were on the natural resources board. How long has this issue of PFAS been on the radar of the DNR?

Preston Cole:
It’s relatively new. I would say there are certainly folks in northeast Wisconsin that have seen this on the landscape and have been dealing with that and in Marinette County, Peshtigo and those locations. But I think that public health officials have been well aware of it. Now that it’s making its way into our water systems and groundwater, as you know, there’s communities in harm’s way that are on bottled water to mitigate them from drinking that water. So I think this conversation has been going on for some time.

Zac Schultz:
Now in seven months, the Republican-controlled Senate has not confirmed a single member of Governor Evers’ cabinet, you included. How does that affect your ability to do your job?

Preston Cole:
Well, I’m here to do my job. I can only control what’s under my control. That process is not ready under my control and I stand ready to appear should they need me. If they have more questions of me but that process is controlled by the Legislature, as you know.

Zac Schultz:
Do you think that lack of confirmation gives them some sort of leverage over you, over decisions you may make regarding the DNR or the environment?

Preston Cole:
I don’t perceive that at all.

Zac Schultz:
All right. Thank you for your time today.

Preston Cole:
Thank you for having me.