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TICO fire products reached a settlement this month with the state of Wisconsin to clean

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up PFAS contamination in Marinette County. TICO manufactured firefighting foam that spread

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the forever chemicals in soil and water. The settlement requires TICO to put 10 million

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dollars into Wisconsin's PFAS trust fund for future cleanup, provide clean water in

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the Marinette area including deep drinking water wells in a prescribed area for 20 years.

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Monitor and report water quality within the 35 square miles that includes parts of the

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city of Marinette and the town of Pestigo and requires TICO to remediate and restore

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the environment in soil, groundwater and surface water. Another lawsuit against the

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company and others is ongoing. For reaction to the PFAS settlement we turn to Jeff Lamont,

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a resident in Marinette and a retired hydrologist and Jeff, thanks very much for being here.

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Welcome, thank you for having me. So how long in coming was this settlement?

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We, AG call was up in Marinette for a DNR listening session, which they were doing

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about every six months at the time to update the public on what was happening and what

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TICO was doing. And in 2019, December, we were able to beg some time from him and pleaded

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our case to file this suit against them for essentially at the time not reporting this.

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They found PFAS on their fire training facility three and a half to four years before they

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reported it to DNR, which violated the spills law and they let the community drink this

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contaminated water for four years before reporting it. So yeah, we're seven years and we were

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first informed of the contamination in November of 2017. So it's almost been 10 years.

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But in your mind, this settlement barely touches the problem?

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Yes, well, so the settlements were not happy at all about because what it did essentially,

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it said there was the initial investigation area and then there was an expanded investigation

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area. And for 10 years, the DNR had fought with TICO about the responsibility beyond

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this essential first area that was investigated. The contamination was the same. I mean, we're

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talking in places where its neighbors right across the street. Well, you weren't going

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to take care of you on this side of the street, but the other side of the street, that's not

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our contamination. And this lawsuit limited their liability to just the initial investigation area

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and not the expanded investigation area or the 3000 acres of contaminated biosolids that was

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spread in Marinette County. But isn't the settlement in the $125 million in state funding and potential

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of an ongoing lawsuit starting point better than nothing? It is better than nothing. But if you

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want to put that into perspective, TICO has set aside $180 million just for this site.

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So, I mean, we're just one of many dozens, if not hundreds in the state that are impacted. So,

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it really does not go very far. And the deep wells TICO has been putting in approximately $100,000

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a piece. So, if you look at another $10 million, that might address another 100 wells in the

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community beyond the initial investigation area that are still contaminated with their PFAS.

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So, you have experience in large scale cleanups with the EPA. What in your experience should be

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happening? Well, you know, I tried to let the citizens of our community know that these are

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very, very long drawn-on processes. I mean, a lot of the super-spun sites that I worked on had been

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in the years for 10, 15, 20, sometimes 30 years before the remediation actually went into place

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or started. And often, these remedial efforts can take multiple years. The Joaquin Harbor cleanup,

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I did, we were there for seven or eight years from once we started the projects. So.

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Can PFAS, these forever chemicals, can they be removed, remediated, make people safe?

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They can be. There's a number of technologies. And as PFAS has become such a huge problem,

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country-wide, a lot of companies have started to invest a lot of money and different techniques

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to clean up. You know, TICO chose, in my opinion, a very ineffective solution. They did a pump

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and treat system to remove shallow groundwater and treat it with granulant-activated carbon

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and resins. And it can remove that, but there are more practical ways. They're more expensive.

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They're reactive barrier walls are one that is being used a lot these days on air force spaces

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and in different communities across the country. But TICO chose, in my opinion,

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a very ineffective method to address this. How can the sources of contamination be held

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accountable in your experience? Well, in this particular case, this fire training center,

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I mean, they were testing for 60 years, these, these atriple F-thomes by igniting accelerants

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and then, and then having different groups that were being trained, whether it was department

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at defense or whether it was different fire, you know, fire departments from different communities,

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airports, they would spray this foam directly on open ground to put these accelerants out

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the trainers. And then once they were done, they would just hose it down to the original ditches. So

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I would have liked them seeing them do a reactive barrier on their site. This

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groundwater treatment system is approximately a half mile down gradient for their site. So

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typically a big source like this, you want to do source control. You want to control

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the contamination where it happened instead of a half mile or a quarter mile down the road

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from where it happened. The high school, Marin High School is between the fire training center

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and where the grower extraction system is going. So all the water underneath the high school

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is contaminated. And of course, we're learning now that air deposition and, and deposition

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through rainwater is a significant contributor to this. And so, you know, when they would burn,

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this soot would go right over the high school. And I remember talking to one of the teachers

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there that retired, they're saying, every day I would walk out after they burn, I'd have to

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wipe my car down because there would be this dust from the fires on my vehicles.

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Do you hold out hope that that this will be adequately remediated in Wisconsin?

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Not a lot without significant, you know, outpour and outcrying from the public.

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It's just, it's such a costly endeavor that unless there's a responsible party like

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we have, Tycho Johnson controls, this is going to fall on the taxpayer. And, you know, there's only

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so much resources in the state budgets for this kind of thing. And like we talked about earlier,

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135 million dollars is kind of a drop in the bucket, really. But it is a starting point. So I

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should be more optimistic, I guess, for that. All right. Well, we will leave it on that note.

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Jeff Lamont, thanks so much. Thank you so much.

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Thank you. Yeah, what a disaster puts it too, too mildly.

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It is. We just, we just wrote the secretary for the DNR, the interim one here,

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because AG call suggested that we reach out for that money, so that 10 million dollars

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were trying to, trying to get it to be spent in the Marinette area, and not just thrown into

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the state coffers and used elsewhere, where we would have to compete with other sites for that.

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I mean, the 10 million dollars is there because of us, and we think it should be used there. So

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we're, we're lobbying big time at the state to have those additional funds spent here for those

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people outside the area that the settlement does not include. So we've got our fingers crossed.

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Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a cluster of three teenage high school boys

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within a two block area in the town, all with its testicular cancer, which is one of the six that

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was defined by the large study that was done, you know, in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

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So, so, so absolutely. I have a niece that recently had her third and fourth child in the

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past couple of years. She had a preeclampsia associated with both of those pregnancies and

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she lives in the plume. So yeah, yeah, we have friends and neighbors that have been impacted

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health wise. That was another thing we thought the settlement didn't do. We were hoping

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that they would kick off or require some kind of medical monitoring or some

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something associated with the settlement and there was nothing. So.

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All right. Well, thank you on behalf of Wisconsinites. Thank you for your work.

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Thank you so much. Marissa, if you could send me the link when this goes, that would be wonderful.

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Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Bye.