Roger Kelso
Columbus City Utilities (CCU) this month was notified it will begin receiving settlement funds associated with a nationwide class action lawsuit it joined in 2023 regarding long-lasting, toxic chemicals in municipal water systems.
CCU is expected to receive approximately $3.9 million out of a settlement reached between Minnesota-based 3M and U.S. public water suppliers associated with the company’s previous production of PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, CCU Director Roger Kelso told The Republic.
3M will continue paying municipal utilities in the U.S. up to $12.5 billion over the next 12 years as part of the settlement agreement to compensate for utilities that have detected PFAS at any level, or may in the future.
PFAS are a cluster of industrial chemicals associated with a variety of serious health conditions and have been used in products ranging from cookware to carpets and firefighting foams and consumer products since the 1940s, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Often dubbed “forever chemicals,” they degrade slowly in the environment and can remain in a person’s blood indefinitely.
Research suggests exposure to certain levels of PFAS can lead to reproductive effects in humans, developmental delays, increased risks for certain cancers, elevated cholesterol levels and weakening of the immune system, according to the EPA.
Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins, the law firm hired by CCU as part of the litigation, received the first installment of $623,385.46 in funds on Dec. 5 and another $1.4 million on Dec. 11. The funds are in the process of being transferred to CCU.
Kelso said it’s unclear when the remaining funds will be paid out, but said it will be used to mitigate any potential impacts PFAS could have on the local water supply.
“Right now we’re doing some exploratory work, even prior to getting the settlement, but doing so to identify other locations in the well field that would be good for us to utilize for the water supply,” Kelso said. “And then we’ll have to establish new wells and a few things like that.”
“We were fortunate enough because of the efforts of Angela (Bowling, CCU quality control officer) and Ashley (Getz, CCU associate director of engineering) that we got in on the very front end of this,” Kelso continued. “Our documentation was excellent, and it just made it so much easier.”
The receipt of settlement funds comes over two years after several types of PFAS — including PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS and PFBS — were detected in the aquifer that supplies Columbus with drinking water, particularly in one well, where concentrations were found to be “literally an order of magnitude higher” than in other wells, officials said previously.
The well, which city officials took offline in 2023, was located between Garden City and railroad tracks on the south side of Columbus.
The Biden administration in 2024 finalized the first federal drinking water limits on PFAS that had already been proposed at the time CCU shut down the well in Garden City, citing growing evidence that exposure to the substances increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers and low birth weight in infants.
The rule set standards for the two most common types of PFAS — known as PFOA and PFOS — at 4 parts per trillion in treated drinking water, effectively the lowest level at which they can be reliably detected.
Regulation of PFOA and PFOS was continued under the Trump administration, although the EPA in May said it planned to scrap limits on three other types of PFAS — including PFHxS — that the Biden administration had set for 10 parts per trillion each, as well as other limits on their combined amount, including some mixtures containing PFBS.
To put the limits in perspective, one part per trillion is roughly the equivalent of a single drop of water in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools, experts told The Republic previously.
In the now-closed Columbus well, PFOA was detected in untreated water at 45 parts per trillion and in the city’s finished drinking water at 7 parts per trillion, according to IDEM, which conducted the tests.
After the well was closed, follow-up state testing did not detect PFOA in Columbus’ finished drinking water.
Officials have said it is hard to identify the sources of the PFAS contamination or how long the chemicals had been there but have suspected that it may have originated locally from surface contamination.
Parts of the aquifer system in Bartholomew County “lack overlying clays” and are “highly susceptible to contamination from surface sources,” according to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The rest of the aquifer system in the county is classified as “moderately susceptible to surface contamination.”
“It seems to be limited to some specific areas in this aquifer area of the (East Fork) White River,” Kelso said.
Officials suspect that the general area near where the well was closed in Columbus may have been used to store several types of chemicals over the years.
Columbus’ drinking water met all federal and state drinking water standards in 2024, according to the utility’s most recent water-quality report, but CCU did include PFAS as unregulated contaminants in the document.
The report lists four types of PFAS — PFBS, PFBA, PFHxA and PFPeA — that were detected in the city’s water in samples taken on July 16, 2024, according to the report.
PFBS was detected at 3.1 to 6.3 parts per trillion, PFBA was detected 5.9 to 6.1 parts per trillion, PFHxA was detected at 3.8 to 4.2 parts per trillion and PFPeA was detected at 6.7 to 10.5 parts per trillion.
The detected PFAS compounds are not subject to EPA regulations.
“These are the ones that there was some detection of,” Kelso said previously. “None of (the amounts detected) are considered an issue or anything like that.”
PFOA and PFOS were not detected in the city’s water in 2024, according to the report.
Kelso said CCU is also expecting some type of receipt of funds through a $1.18 billion settlement from DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc. to resolve lawsuits over PFAS contamination filed by around 300 drinking water providers.
