Revised July 13, 2024
Note: Water quality, testing and standards are complicated. SCA recommends you contact any of the sources in this article for more clarity. Private wells are not tested by the City. Learn more about how to test your private well.
The EPA just announced a first-ever National Drinking Water Standard to protect 100M people from PFAS pollution. This comes with $1B in funding for mitigation.
Overview:
- Shorewood was notified by the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) in Oct. 2022 that the Amesbury well (eastern Shorewood) was tested for PFAS as part of the Statewide Monitoring Project. The results were not posted to the city website until Dec. 2023, fourteen months after the testing.
- Shorewood received notice of two nationwide, class action settlements of various claims against DuPont and 3M for the proliferation of PFAS in public water systems.
- The City is an eligible claimant to join those suits, based on sampling results by the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). In lay terms, PFAs are known as “forever chemicals.” They do not ever break down, whether in the environment or human bodies.
- On Nov. 27th, 2023 the City Council went into closed session for an attorney-client privileged discussion of potential PFAS litigation, and possible participation in the 3M and DuPont Settlements.
- Following the closed session that same night, the Council publicly discussed the litigation. A memo from Administrator Marc Nevinski (start at p. 345), outlined the details of the suit. The end result was a unanimous council vote to join into the class action lawsuit.
Details:
- According to the Shorewood website
- “The results showed a detectable amount of a PFAS known as PFBA, which was measured at 0.0067ug/L (parts per billion).”
- The test results were well within the MDH guidance of 7.0ug/L. (Note: the MDH measures PFBAs in “parts per trillion).” At these levels, the City is not required to report the results to residents.
- Minnesota Department of Health states: “anyone drinking water at or below the guidance level would have little to no risk of health effects.” *
- The most current municipal well testing results are for 2022 and are available on the City website.
- Testing results from an independent firm.
Unanswered questions:
- Why was there a 14 month delay for the City to publish the test results on its website?
- What are the requirements for testing and results reporting to consumers?
- When will the City notify Amesbury well users of the results, and what those results mean for the health of municipal water consumers?
- Is the City concerned that unsafe test results will affect resident willingness to connect to the city water system?
- The Mound water system is notoriously contaminated with manganese: Are Shorewood municipal wells being tested for this?
An article in the StarTribune (April 11th) discusses the EPA change in guidelines.
The Harvard School of Public Health provides an excellent overview of the matter:
“The previous guideline, set [by the EPA] in 2016, set a limit of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for both PFOS and PFOA in drinking water. The new advisories decrease that by more than a thousand fold. The new limit for PFOS is 0.02 ppt; for PFOA, it’s 0.004 ppt.
* Essentially, the EPA is saying that it’s important to get the PFAS contamination of drinking water as close to zero as possible.” – The Harvard School of Public Health
Other sources:
Minnesota Department of Health
City of Shorewood
Food & Drug Administration
How to make your household water safe from PFAs
