Twenty-one million dollars sounds like a lot of money until you realize that three huge questions still hang in the wind:
- how much damage is there to the water supply
- how can this be fixed; and
- what’s it going to cost.
A big settlement is good, but it may be too early to pop the champagne.
Better living through chemistry
The old advertising slogan, a variant on the 1935 DuPont tag line, “Better Things for Better Living…Through Chemistry,” has suffered its share of irony over the years. PFAS, short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, were used in household and personal products for eighty years.
They were used to fight jet fuel fires, waterproof and stain proof fabrics. Careful parents bought PFAS-laden pajamas for their children because they were fireproof. Nonstick PFAS-treated pans were touted as a way to slim America’s waistline by reducing the need to cook with butter and oil.
But PFAS do not degrade naturally. They’ve contaminated the groundwater throughout the country, and they have been linked to a wide variety of health problems, including various cancers, obesity and developmental delays in children.
PFAS MDL
Roughly 10,000 PFAS lawsuits have been consolidated for pre-trial proceedings in the District of South Carolina. Tampa Bay Water filed its lawsuit relatively early and helped to lead the litigation against 3M Co. and E.I. Du Pont de Nemours and Co. in 2020.
In 2023, the companies agreed to pay a collective $13.7 billion for contaminating public water systems around the country: $12.5 billion from 3M and $1.2 billion from DuPont.
Measuring the problem
Tampa Bay Water supplies water to 2.6 million residents in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Pasco counties, as well as the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and New Port Richey. The utility also supplies water to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The water is sourced from groundwater; surface water including the Alafia River, Hillsborough River and the Tampa Bypass Canal; and desalinated seawater.
The EPA has set the maximum limit for PFAS (including PFOA and PFOS, related chemicals) in drinking water at 4 parts per trillion (ppt). Water utilities across the country have until 2031 to comply with this regulatory limit.
To keep this in perspective, however, the 4 ppt limit represents the lowest level at which PFAS water contamination can be reliably measured. It does not represent a level below which PFAS exposure is safe. Even extremely low levels of PFAS in drinking water are believed to be dangerous.
The utility reportedly found between 4 ppt and 6.9 ppt of PFOS and non-detectable to 4.6 ppt of PFOA during testing over the past year at three locations in Hillsborough County wells and river water sources. In 2018, MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, recorded an alarming 517,000 ppt of PFOS and 62,400 ppt of PFOA in its groundwater.
Assessing the solutions
The science behind cleaning up water that has been contaminated with chemicals that do not biodegrade is still a work in progress. Two major remediation strategies have emerged, both with advantages and disadvantages: on-site remedies and off-site approaches.
On-site approaches focus on injecting materials into the subsurface that can absorb and immobilize PFAS. One strategy involves injecting colloidal activated carbon into the contaminated area (imagine spreading kitty litter on a garage oil spill). Another involves building a horizontal barrier (like a floor) on the bottom of the soil area to stop the seepage. A third involves pouring peroxide into the problem.
Off-site approaches involve extracting water from contaminated sites, transporting it to a treatment facility, and filtering it using activated carbon or ion exchange resins. These are generally effective but extremely expensive. The treated groundwater is often returned to the aquifer or discharged to surface water. Critics of off-site approaches suggest that pulling poisonous water out of the ground could increase the risk of human exposure.
READ MORE PFAS HEALTH RISKS LEGAL NEWS
Tampa Bay Water has recently announced that it intends to build a Suspended Ion Exchange plant, the first in the U.S., which will help to filter out carbon and other organic material from water drawn from the Hillsborough River. This may also make it easier to remove PFAS.
How much money?
The silence is deafening about how much it will ultimately cost to clean up PFAS water contamination in the Tampa Bay area. The American Water Works Association estimates that the cost of nationwide PFAS water cleanup may be more than $3.8 billion per year and that it could take many years.
So yes, the news of a big settlement for Tampa Bay Water is good. But PFAS lawsuit watchers still have no good way to estimate its impact.
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