toward green Bay as well. Mayor, thanks very much.
>> Thanks for having me. >> 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, population 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 it was a relief,
to be honest. It's been, you know, 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, is the first of 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 talked to DNR yesterday
as a matter of fact. And 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, or
our residents, I should say not not necessarily
municipality or it's going to be public water works
that get the money. You know, we've got Wausau,
we've got Tomahawk and some and Rhinelander Yvonne that
have well, issues for their township, 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? And 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 Re drills were done, they
still had PFAs in their water, which made their
water undrinkable. Some of them came up, still had
PFAs, but it was below the level. So the second area
secondary treatment on that is to put in a water
treatment system in your home. It's, it's we don't
want or I, I, 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's very hard to, you know, take showers.
It's it makes it much more difficult. So that's why a
whole house system would be important. And 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, a well that works, that's a much
longer term solution. And also it's, it's not 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's roughly 4000 a year. That's very,
very rough on our on our families out here. We're
not a rich community. We're not vacation homes. We're
farmers. We're ranchers. We're small, you know,
we're 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 paper mills. 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 years. The property
that I own, they spread it 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 are lined, were lined with PFAs 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 PFAs came from when they were
treating those microwave popcorn bags. That's what
we've been told. That's what the history shows. And
that, of course, is what the DNR pointed to in their
announcement of a linked source. But the paper mill
Ahlstrom, 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.
>> Well, we will keep watching the situation