Thank you.
Okay.
So apparently there's some
kind of matter having
to do with a
record deck or something
like that.
And I'm sure that
our engineers are running around
like how they do when
the transmission
line goes down or something.
But they are
crack engineers, so they'll have it
back up very shortly.
Sorry, I have no
idea.
What is the length of this segment
tonight?
It's like pretty short
for us. It's about five.
Just didn't want to drown on too
long with certain issues.
Oh, I'll cut you off.
Yeah.
Kidding.
I have my lengthy answers and I have
my shorter answers.
Yeah, this is like oddly
somewhere in between, right?
How long have I been chair since?
A year ago, yeah,
April of last year.
And were you on the town
board before that?
I've been the town board chair
this last year,
and I have been the fire
chief out here for about 20,
I've on the fire department 23
years. I was the assistant chief for
20 years, and I've the fire Chief
for three years.
Wow.
Yeah, so my background is
as an environmental health
specialist.
Perfect. I was, yeah, I was
a commissioned officer with the U.S.
Public Health Service, so I was
active duty and served in
the Public Health service.
And so.
Um, my background, I've been dealing
with PFAS and stuff like that for
probably the last 10 years.
And so when our community started
having issues, um,
you know, I kind of stepped up and
started asking a lot of very pointed
questions.
Um, and that's kind of what led me
to become town work chair was,
you know, people
wanted someone that, you could help
them with the answers, you
know, or at least try to get the
answers.
That is really interesting.
I never knew that, and that is so
important, and how lucky,
how lucky for
the community to have
you with that experience
and background.
And I worked for the government for,
like I said, I worked for the
Government for, goofy thing
just came on again.
I worked the government 34 years in
service.
I was five years in the Army and
then I was 28 years with the Public
Health Service. So I retired in 2022
with 34
years of military service.
Nice pension.
Yeah, doing alright.
It pays the bills and keeps me busy,
but I retired
and seemed like I got more busy,
busier.
Well, yeah, it sounds like it.
I think our engineers worked
that through.
Yep. Got it. Let's see.
Perfect.
Now that 125 million
state dollars are coming to the
rescue for communities across
Wisconsin poisoned by the forever
chemicals PFAS, the
question is when will the money come
and how much will go where?
Those questions are front of mind in
the town of Stella, a population of
about 650,
with some of the highest
concentrations of PFAS in
the country.
Town Chair William Casey Crump is
here, and thanks very much for being
here.
Thank you for having me.
So what was your reaction when you
learned the funds would finally be
released?
It was a relief,
to be honest.
It's been two years or
three years, roughly, I think, since
those funds were originally talked
about.
And to have the Senate and the
governor finally come to an
agreement and get that stuff signed
off on and get it out is
the first of many steps
yet to come, I think.
Yeah, because what do you know about
how much Stella will receive?
That's the great unknown.
I've talked to DNR yesterday, as
a matter of fact, and we're going
to, they're still trying to figure
out exactly who's going to control
the money, how it's going to be
distributed.
They're not even sure themselves
exactly, you know, whether it's
going to be municipalities like
Stella that end up getting some of
the money or our residents,
I should say, not necessarily the
municipality.
Or it's going to be public water
works that get the money.
We've got Wausau and we've got
Tomahawk and Rhinelander even
that have well issues
for their towns, whereas out here
in Starks, we're individual wells.
And so each homeowner is responsible
for that. And so it's very
important, hopefully, that
there will be some of that money
that will go directly to those
residents.
Because would that be priority one
for the funds in Stella, Private
Wells?
I would love to see it become
priority one, either that or
treatment systems.
The way it is right now is the
DNR did have some funds that they
made available for people to have
their wells redrilled.
The problem is when those redrills
were done, they still had PFAS in
their water, which made their water
undrinkable.
Some of them came up, still had
PFOAS, but it was below the level.
So the secondary treatment on
that is to put in a water treatment
system in your
I feel like we don't want
a kitchen faucet treatment.
We want a whole house treatment
system because if you're only
getting your drinking water from
your kitchen sink, it's very
hard to brush teeth, it
makes it much more difficult.
That's why a whole-house system
would be important.
Those are expensive, so again,
money for that would be a blessing.
Why not jump right to the whole
house system instead of going
through drilling
new wells or deeper wells?
Well, I think that if they can
get clean water and they can get a
well that works, that's a much
longer term solution.
And also,
it's not going to
be any more of a great cost
on the residents.
The whole home treatments require
filters.
Those filters run $300 to $500.
They recommend you change those
quarterly.
There's two filters.
So that's $1,000 each time they
have to change the filter.
So that' roughly $4,000 a year.
That's very, very rough on
our families out here.
We're not a rich community.
We're no vacation homes.
We're farmers.
We're ranchers.
We're small, you know, we're
blue collar people.
So we've reported on this, but what
is the known source of the PFAS
in your community?
Well, it's definitely,
there is a lot of information
that points to the paper mills.
The sludge from the papermills, and
I'm not sure if you know how that
works and I won't go into great
detail on that.
But when they wash the paper, all of
that water gets collected, all the
stuff that comes off the paper gets
collected. And it was looked at back
in the 60s and 70s as a very,
very high nutrient-rich
fertilizer.
So they spread it on the fields out
here for years and years and year.
The property that I own, they spread
clear back into mid-70s,
I think, up until probably
the time we bought the land.
And so, paper mill has been
a big part of that.
And the paper mill here made
microwave popcorn bags.
Those bags were lined with PFOS
to keep them from leaking, to keep
the butter and the oil inside it
from leaking out.
And that's where the majority of the
PFOS came from when they were
treating those microwave popcorn
bag. That's what we've been told.
That's the history shows.
And that, of course, is what the DNR
pointed to in their announcement of
a linked source.
And so what do you know about the
linked source having
some responsibility toward
remediation and
helping the community?
Sure.
And, you know, we're not the town
itself is not involved in a lawsuit
or anything like that.
Some of our individual residents are
involved in that lawsuit.
But the the paper mill,
Alstrom, who is like the third
owner, I think, since I've lived
here in the last 20 years,
they have stepped forward and they
are providing some drinking water to
families that are have concerns.
The problem with that is it's not
a solution.
It's just, I mean, they're only
gonna provide the water and they're
gonna reevaluate in January of 2027.
So people may just turn around and
lose that water if they just stop.
And so my take on
that is they should be using that
water to test people's wells who
wanna be tested and then help
them out if there are high
PFAS, help them with getting the
treatment system or help them up
with paperwork to get the DNR
to provide some funds for
well drilling or something like
that. The money they spend on the
drinking water is going to anybody
that wants drinking water.
They don't even have to have their
well tested.
And so obviously there's some
room for individuals
to get water that may not
necessarily need it.
So again, they're trying,
I think it's a first step, a very
basic first step.
I have requested to sit down with
them. I put that request in over
a month and a half ago and I
got a call back two,
three weeks ago saying they were
still trying to determine how
and if and when they wanted to meet
with us.
So we're getting the spin there.
It feels like to me because it's
been more than a month since I
made that request to them and we've
heard nothing.
Well we will keep watching the
situation there and we appreciate
your time.
You betcha, thank you.
For more on this and other issues
facing Wisconsin, visit our website
at pbswisconsin.org
and then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight.
I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Have a good weekend.
Thank you.