May 14th, 2024
NEWS RELEASE:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Senator Robert Cowles - (608) 266-0484
Senate Votes to Override PFAS Bill Veto
MADISON – Senator Rob Cowles (R-Green Bay) delivered the following speech on 2023 Senate Bill 312 on the Senate Floor during today’s veto override session:
“PFAS has impacted numerous sites throughout the state, and the truth is that we’re still learning more about PFAS every day.
One thing that’s not new information is how the DNR has chosen to approach the issue of PFAS. That’s why my co-authors and I felt it was imperative that, as we provide the structure for financial relief from PFAS contamination, we also provide legal protections.
We established our innocent landowners list through much thought and consultation with the DNR. We even made numerous changes to the list of innocent landowners based on feedback from the DNR, in addition to dozens of other changes made to the bill based on DNR feedback throughout multiple amendments over the course of months of meetings and phone calls.
We feel our final list of innocent landowners is incredibly defensible, and would definitively avoid giving relief to guilty parties. A Legislative Council memo from December supported this fact. Our list is so well constructed that, according to a Legislative Council memo from this month, there is a “significant degree of overlap” between our list of innocent parties in SB 312 and the list of parties the EPA decided to not hold federally liable for contamination under the Superfund process that was recently announced.
The Governor and the DNR have said on numerous occasions that they choose not to pursue parties innocent in contamination events for enforcement. Unfortunately, that’s just not true. I believe the Governor was acting on wrong information when he decided to veto this bill, and as a result, victims of pollution throughout the state will continue to be on the hook, financially and legally, for contamination created through no fault of their own.
A review of the DNR’s publicly-available documentation on PFAS contamination sites showed 22 sites with responsible parties that should reasonably be considered innocent for the contamination. These sites are spread throughout the state, impacting 16 different Senate Districts.
Local units of government already have some limited liability protections under the Spills Law. Yet, despite these protections, 11 of these sites include parties that are local units of government. These parties have had to prioritize funding to address PFAS, removing funding from other services such as fire, EMS, police, and roadwork.
These local governments largely have no choice but to comply with the DNR’s orders. In one case, three entities, all of which are local units of government, were named as responsible parties for the same site. This contamination was caused due to a Federal Aviation Administration mandate to train and test with firefighting foam as part of airport certification. While these parties were working out how to share responsibility for the contamination along with taking other appropriate steps including seeking federal approval for the cleanup, the DNR threatened $20,000 per day fines because the DNR felt they weren’t moving fast enough.
In another case, intrusion from an industrial spill at an adjoining property made its way into a municipal well. While the DNR had the industrial actor clean up contamination on the company’s own property, the DNR held the city liable for well contamination it did not cause. It’s been more than 40 years since that spill, and while the industrial actor is off the hook for multiple contaminants including PFAS, the city is still working on removing its own liability.
In another case, a city owned a local quarry, and a company found it easy to sneak in and dump industrial toxic waste in the quarry. A DNR warden’s investigation confirmed these facts through firsthand accounts of a company employee. Who did the DNR deem liable for this contamination? The city, because they are the possessor of the contamination given their property ownership.
These are just some of the many instances where the DNR has not gone after the persons or entities truly responsible for the contamination, but instead has sought a party of easiest convenience to hold liable. If the parties disagree with their liability, they can be threatened them with enforcement actions if they did not comply.
This is why all three local government groups – the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, the Wisconsin Towns Association, and the Wisconsin Counties Association – are not only asking for the financial relief that SB 312 could provide, but they’re asking for the legal protections that SB 312 could provide.
We have a chance to remedy this mistake by the Governor. The EPA recently recognized that victims of pollution deserve protection. I’m hoping my colleagues will look at the victims of pollutions already being held liable in Wisconsin and realize that we not only need financial resources to fix our PFAS problem, but we need legal protections to help innocent parties avoid the long arm of the bureaucracy.”
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