WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:26.840 TICO fire products reached a settlement this month with the state of Wisconsin to clean 00:26.840 --> 00:33.280 up PFAS contamination in Marinette County. TICO manufactured firefighting foam that spread 00:33.280 --> 00:39.880 the forever chemicals in soil and water. The settlement requires TICO to put 10 million 00:39.880 --> 00:45.880 dollars into Wisconsin's PFAS trust fund for future cleanup, provide clean water in 00:45.880 --> 00:52.080 the Marinette area including deep drinking water wells in a prescribed area for 20 years. 00:52.080 --> 00:57.720 Monitor and report water quality within the 35 square miles that includes parts of the 00:57.720 --> 01:03.640 city of Marinette and the town of Pestigo and requires TICO to remediate and restore 01:03.640 --> 01:08.840 the environment in soil, groundwater and surface water. Another lawsuit against the 01:08.840 --> 01:15.800 company and others is ongoing. For reaction to the PFAS settlement we turn to Jeff Lamont, 01:15.800 --> 01:21.920 a resident in Marinette and a retired hydrologist and Jeff, thanks very much for being here. 01:21.920 --> 01:29.720 Welcome, thank you for having me. So how long in coming was this settlement? 01:29.720 --> 01:36.200 We, AG call was up in Marinette for a DNR listening session, which they were doing 01:36.200 --> 01:40.800 about every six months at the time to update the public on what was happening and what 01:40.800 --> 01:50.880 TICO was doing. And in 2019, December, we were able to beg some time from him and pleaded 01:50.880 --> 01:58.240 our case to file this suit against them for essentially at the time not reporting this. 01:58.240 --> 02:04.720 They found PFAS on their fire training facility three and a half to four years before they 02:04.720 --> 02:11.600 reported it to DNR, which violated the spills law and they let the community drink this 02:11.600 --> 02:19.320 contaminated water for four years before reporting it. So yeah, we're seven years and we were 02:19.400 --> 02:26.680 first informed of the contamination in November of 2017. So it's almost been 10 years. 02:26.680 --> 02:31.360 But in your mind, this settlement barely touches the problem? 02:31.360 --> 02:40.360 Yes, well, so the settlements were not happy at all about because what it did essentially, 02:40.360 --> 02:47.240 it said there was the initial investigation area and then there was an expanded investigation 02:47.240 --> 02:54.680 area. And for 10 years, the DNR had fought with TICO about the responsibility beyond 02:54.680 --> 03:00.840 this essential first area that was investigated. The contamination was the same. I mean, we're 03:00.840 --> 03:05.320 talking in places where its neighbors right across the street. Well, you weren't going 03:05.320 --> 03:09.000 to take care of you on this side of the street, but the other side of the street, that's not 03:09.000 --> 03:16.840 our contamination. And this lawsuit limited their liability to just the initial investigation area 03:16.840 --> 03:24.440 and not the expanded investigation area or the 3000 acres of contaminated biosolids that was 03:24.440 --> 03:33.480 spread in Marinette County. But isn't the settlement in the $125 million in state funding and potential 03:33.480 --> 03:40.920 of an ongoing lawsuit starting point better than nothing? It is better than nothing. But if you 03:41.000 --> 03:50.200 want to put that into perspective, TICO has set aside $180 million just for this site. 03:51.000 --> 03:58.200 So, I mean, we're just one of many dozens, if not hundreds in the state that are impacted. So, 03:59.480 --> 04:08.200 it really does not go very far. And the deep wells TICO has been putting in approximately $100,000 04:08.600 --> 04:15.320 a piece. So, if you look at another $10 million, that might address another 100 wells in the 04:15.320 --> 04:21.400 community beyond the initial investigation area that are still contaminated with their PFAS. 04:21.400 --> 04:28.440 So, you have experience in large scale cleanups with the EPA. What in your experience should be 04:28.440 --> 04:35.560 happening? Well, you know, I tried to let the citizens of our community know that these are 04:35.560 --> 04:42.760 very, very long drawn-on processes. I mean, a lot of the super-spun sites that I worked on had been 04:43.800 --> 04:52.120 in the years for 10, 15, 20, sometimes 30 years before the remediation actually went into place 04:52.120 --> 04:59.560 or started. And often, these remedial efforts can take multiple years. The Joaquin Harbor cleanup, 04:59.560 --> 05:06.200 I did, we were there for seven or eight years from once we started the projects. So. 05:07.400 --> 05:16.040 Can PFAS, these forever chemicals, can they be removed, remediated, make people safe? 05:18.120 --> 05:26.440 They can be. There's a number of technologies. And as PFAS has become such a huge problem, 05:27.160 --> 05:32.840 country-wide, a lot of companies have started to invest a lot of money and different techniques 05:32.840 --> 05:39.800 to clean up. You know, TICO chose, in my opinion, a very ineffective solution. They did a pump 05:39.800 --> 05:46.280 and treat system to remove shallow groundwater and treat it with granulant-activated carbon 05:47.160 --> 05:57.880 and resins. And it can remove that, but there are more practical ways. They're more expensive. 05:57.880 --> 06:03.480 They're reactive barrier walls are one that is being used a lot these days on air force spaces 06:03.480 --> 06:09.640 and in different communities across the country. But TICO chose, in my opinion, 06:09.640 --> 06:15.560 a very ineffective method to address this. How can the sources of contamination be held 06:15.560 --> 06:23.400 accountable in your experience? Well, in this particular case, this fire training center, 06:23.400 --> 06:33.160 I mean, they were testing for 60 years, these, these atriple F-thomes by igniting accelerants 06:33.160 --> 06:36.920 and then, and then having different groups that were being trained, whether it was department 06:36.920 --> 06:42.280 at defense or whether it was different fire, you know, fire departments from different communities, 06:43.240 --> 06:50.520 airports, they would spray this foam directly on open ground to put these accelerants out 06:50.520 --> 06:55.480 the trainers. And then once they were done, they would just hose it down to the original ditches. So 06:58.120 --> 07:04.280 I would have liked them seeing them do a reactive barrier on their site. This 07:04.280 --> 07:09.720 groundwater treatment system is approximately a half mile down gradient for their site. So 07:10.280 --> 07:14.840 typically a big source like this, you want to do source control. You want to control 07:14.840 --> 07:20.200 the contamination where it happened instead of a half mile or a quarter mile down the road 07:20.200 --> 07:25.800 from where it happened. The high school, Marin High School is between the fire training center 07:25.800 --> 07:32.520 and where the grower extraction system is going. So all the water underneath the high school 07:33.320 --> 07:39.400 is contaminated. And of course, we're learning now that air deposition and, and deposition 07:39.400 --> 07:45.960 through rainwater is a significant contributor to this. And so, you know, when they would burn, 07:45.960 --> 07:51.240 this soot would go right over the high school. And I remember talking to one of the teachers 07:51.240 --> 07:55.320 there that retired, they're saying, every day I would walk out after they burn, I'd have to 07:55.320 --> 08:00.040 wipe my car down because there would be this dust from the fires on my vehicles. 08:01.000 --> 08:07.320 Do you hold out hope that that this will be adequately remediated in Wisconsin? 08:10.440 --> 08:16.840 Not a lot without significant, you know, outpour and outcrying from the public. 08:18.680 --> 08:25.400 It's just, it's such a costly endeavor that unless there's a responsible party like 08:26.120 --> 08:32.600 we have, Tycho Johnson controls, this is going to fall on the taxpayer. And, you know, there's only 08:32.600 --> 08:37.400 so much resources in the state budgets for this kind of thing. And like we talked about earlier, 08:37.400 --> 08:43.240 135 million dollars is kind of a drop in the bucket, really. But it is a starting point. So I 08:43.240 --> 08:47.960 should be more optimistic, I guess, for that. All right. Well, we will leave it on that note. 08:47.960 --> 08:51.400 Jeff Lamont, thanks so much. Thank you so much. 08:56.440 --> 09:01.720 Thank you. Yeah, what a disaster puts it too, too mildly. 09:03.080 --> 09:08.120 It is. We just, we just wrote the secretary for the DNR, the interim one here, 09:09.080 --> 09:16.280 because AG call suggested that we reach out for that money, so that 10 million dollars 09:16.280 --> 09:21.000 were trying to, trying to get it to be spent in the Marinette area, and not just thrown into 09:21.000 --> 09:26.360 the state coffers and used elsewhere, where we would have to compete with other sites for that. 09:26.360 --> 09:31.240 I mean, the 10 million dollars is there because of us, and we think it should be used there. So 09:31.240 --> 09:37.880 we're, we're lobbying big time at the state to have those additional funds spent here for those 09:37.880 --> 09:43.880 people outside the area that the settlement does not include. So we've got our fingers crossed. 09:47.080 --> 10:00.120 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a cluster of three teenage high school boys 10:01.000 --> 10:08.520 within a two block area in the town, all with its testicular cancer, which is one of the six that 10:08.520 --> 10:15.960 was defined by the large study that was done, you know, in Parkersburg, West Virginia. 10:15.960 --> 10:23.720 So, so, so absolutely. I have a niece that recently had her third and fourth child in the 10:23.720 --> 10:29.960 past couple of years. She had a preeclampsia associated with both of those pregnancies and 10:29.960 --> 10:36.680 she lives in the plume. So yeah, yeah, we have friends and neighbors that have been impacted 10:36.680 --> 10:41.560 health wise. That was another thing we thought the settlement didn't do. We were hoping 10:42.360 --> 10:48.120 that they would kick off or require some kind of medical monitoring or some 10:49.160 --> 10:52.680 something associated with the settlement and there was nothing. So. 10:55.560 --> 11:00.760 All right. Well, thank you on behalf of Wisconsinites. Thank you for your work. 11:01.960 --> 11:06.200 Thank you so much. Marissa, if you could send me the link when this goes, that would be wonderful. 11:06.200 --> 11:12.200 Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Bye.