State lawmakers probe details of 3M settlement
Minnesota legislators heard more details Thursday about the state's $850 million settlement with 3M for natural resources damage.
Minnesota sued 3M over contamination from perfluorinated chemicals or PFCs in the east metro. The two sides reached a settlement the day a trial in the case was scheduled to begin.
After legal fees and other expenses are paid, the state will get $720 million for clean drinking water and natural resource projects. Most of the money will be used to provide long-term solutions for the roughly 157,000 east metro residents whose drinking water was affected.
"This grant from 3M sets us up to really look holistically at the drinking water needs of these communities that have been adversely impacted because of the presence of PFCs," said Kirk Koudelka, assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, told the House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee. "We want to work together with the communities and build out that slate of projects."
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Koudelka said working groups will be created by the end of March to help develop projects. He said the MPCA and the Department of Natural Resources will seek input from east metro residents through listening sessions this spring.
Two PFCs known as PFOS and PFOA were produced by 3M from the 1950s until 2002. Until the 1970s, they were disposed in landfills in the east metro, where they leached into the groundwater and the Mississippi River.
Legislators had plenty of questions about the settlement, ranging from whether small amounts of PFCs really pose a health threat to whether $850 million will be enough to cover all the state's needs.
Some legislators wanted to know more about habitat restoration projects mentioned in the settlement. Chairman Dan Fabian, R-Roseau, voiced concern that money could be used to build fishing piers.
DNR assistant commissioner Barb Naramore said that's one possibility.
"We know that there are many people in the east metro that fish either for recreationally or for subsistence," Naramore said. "The purpose of a fishing pier under this natural resource damage settlement, if built, would be to provide those people to access to non-PFC contaminated fish."
Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, said he wished the case had gone to trial so many of the questions about PFC contamination could have been answered in a courtroom.
Hansen said he wants to make sure the settlement money goes to east metro residents whose drinking water was affected.
"I am very concerned to make sure that there are strong guardrails on these funds," he said. "We have recent history where funds get borrowed from with the promise to get paid back and then they don't get paid back, or they just get taken."