Cottage Grove group calls for higher standards for 3M after decades of PFC pollution

For decades, 3M has manufactured perfluorochemicals, or PFCs, in the broader Twin Cities area. The chemicals, used in a variety of 3M products, including fire retardants and paint, have left a toxic legacy: contamination of drinking wells and the Mississippi River. That pollution, at issue in a recently filed state lawsuit, is drawing attention to the broader impacts of industry in the area: One community group is asking the state Pollution Control Agency (PCA) to take into account the total effect of industrial pollution on community health as Minnesota revises several of 3M’s environmental permits.

“The problem with the regulatory process is it looks at air, it looks at water, and it looks at solid waste separately,” said Alan Muller, a former chemical industry consultant, in an interview with the Minnesota Independent. “And even with those categories, the permits are done within individual facilities, and they don’t really look at the cumulative impacts.”

Muller is working with the Coalition of Concerned Cottage Grove Citizens (CoCCGC), a group that opposes 3M’s plans to import waste for an incinerator in the town. The incinerator provides power to the company, but historically has used only waste generated on site. 3M and the mayor say that bringing in the waste would not add more pollution to the air, but CoCCGC member Brian Quinnell said his group firmly opposes the idea.

“We kind of look at it and say, you know, any increase in pollution of the community is unacceptable,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s within the tolerance of the PCA.”

The PCA has not yet issued the draft permit to burn the imported waste but Myron Bailey, mayor of Cottage Grove, a community southeast of St. Paul, says that the incinerator will continue to be “a clean-running process” and that the community concerns have simply spilled over from worries about 3M’s former, unlined PFC dump in Woodbury. Although 3M phased out the use of PFCs in 2002, the state alleges in a new lawsuit that groundwater pollution from the dump continues to impact drinking water and the Mississippi River.

“As a result of the injury caused by 3M to the state’s natural resources by the discharge of PFCs into the environment, the state and its citizens face substantial costs to provide alternative sources of groundwater for domestic and other uses and to restore surface waters for the full use and enjoyment of the public,” according to the complaint filed Dec. 30 by Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson.

But Bill Nelson, a spokesperson for 3M, said the clean-up is working.

“In terms of managing PFCs in the environment, it is happening,” said Nelson. “So the lawsuit is not needed.”

But the mayor says that even though 3M is pumping water out of the ground in Woodbury, piping the water to Cottage Grove for treatment, and then discharging it into the river, the groundwater in Woodbury is still heavily contaminated.

“People don’t trust 3M right now because of what happened with the water,” Bailey said in an interview. “And they say, ‘How many years from now will we find out that what was burning in the incinerator is poison for us?’”

But Nelson says that importing waste is only necessary due to the “environmental achievements” of the company in its own use of high-energy solvents. And he says that 3M agreed to install air monitoring equipment, set a cap on the volume of solvent that can be imported, and refrain from operating the facility as a commercial incinerator.

“There are citizens in the community that have opposed this from day one,” Nelson told the Minnesota Independent, adding their concern isn’t based on facts. “It’s based on spreading fear in the community.”

Quinnell said he was dissatisfied with the promises 3M has made, particularly in regard to the monitoring. His group wanted the company to monitor the air that comes directly out of the smokestack, rather than at a spot adjacent to the facility. And he sees 3M’s resistance to cleaning up the drinking water as evidence that the company no longer cares about the community.

“It was a great plce to work, you know, your dad worked there and your mom worked there, and you wanted to work there and retire there,” he said. “3M has become a global enterprise and there’s no loyalty to the community anymore. It’s about the bottom line.”

The level of contamination in the city’s drinking water system lies below health-based standards, meaning it is considered safe despite the presence of PFCs. But the mayor argues that 3M should go beyond what the law requires and pay to install a system to filter out the residual contamination, a step that 3M doesn’t intend to take.

The cost of two treatment facilities for the city supply would reach $112 million. In addition, pipes to the outlying Langdon and River Acres area would cost $1.2 million and $6 million, respectively, and yearly maintenance of the facilities would cost roughly $12 million per year. The costs are based on the type of carbon-filtration technology used in Lake Elmo, another Twin Cities area town impacted by the company.

“We’re asking 3M to be a good steward of the community and help us make the citizens of Cottage Grove feel safe about their drinking water,” Bailey said. “And the way to do that would be to create a water treatment system that takes PFCs out of the water.”

In a parallel process, the state on Jan. 3 announced it is revising 3M’s permits for releasing water into the river from its Cottage Grove facility. The PCA said that an area downstream from the plant is contaminated by a type of PFC known as perfluorooctanoic sulfonate and that the new permit, if finalized, would keep the company’s water releases from impairing the Mississippi even further. Mayor Bailey agreed that the draft permit is extremely stringent.

“The water that’s going into the Mississippi will be cleaner than the water we’re drinking, which is really crazy when you think about it,” he said.

The PCA will hold a public information meeting on the river discharge permit at 6pm on Jan. 26, at the Washington County South Service Center in Cottage Grove.