What Will PFAS-free Drinking Water Cost?

From the MPCA and MN DNRs Conceptual Drinking Water Supply Plan, Final Plan August 2021, Chapter 8, Figure 8.3, page 6

The total cost for building and maintaining PFAS water protections for 176,000 citizens living in affected communities east of 3M in St. Paul, MN is estimated to be $432 Million.   Including money for planning and administration of the plan, the total cost for providing clean drinking water for less than 200,000 people comes in pretty close to half a billion dollars.

As communities contaminated with PFAS consider what’s involved in reducing/eliminating exposure, the reality of the price tags associated with clean up of the “likley carcinogens” are staggering.  I live in a community east of St. Paul, MN and, more importantly, east of two major landfills that were used by 3M to dispose of PFAS between 1950-1980s.  My community, along with 12 others, is the region targeted for remediation by the $850,000,000 settlement between 3M and the State of Minnesota (after legal fees, we’re left with about $700 Million to create a solution).  Of course, PFAS has long been removed from the local landfills, but our communities will be dealing with PFAS contamination of surface water, ground water, and sediment for decades; the proposed remediation plan looks out at least 20 years. 

Each of the communities included in the settlement area has had to develop plans for treating or replacing their PFAS-contaminated drinking water.  Given the extent of contamination, the complexity of the groundwater (the PFAS plumes effect 6 different aquifers), understanding a “safe level” of exposure (still a moving target with EPA), and the challenges associated with “fixing” one problem without creating another - all the while working with a budget - it’s not surprising that planning was time and resource intensive.   The final recommendations, which may not truly be final in light of EPA’s new proposed limits, lay out a plan for infrastructure and 20 years of maintenance for PFAS water treatment solutions for approximately 175,000 community members.  

Although each community wanted to maintain water autonomy, the economics of the solution required that a few communities link their supplies.  Beyond that, remediation is a combination of new wastewater treatment facilities, Point of Entry Treatment (POETs) for private wells, and infrastructure to connect some private wells to municipal systems.  Again, as a matter of economics, planners went to great lengths to stay precisely within the limits outlined in the 3M Settlement, for example, removing any dollars associated with providing clean water to only address population growth.  

For my rural community of about 3,000 people with no municipal water system, the proposal is to install POETs for each contaminated well at a total cost of about $200,000; maintaining these systems for 20 years will cost an additional $1.7M.  This results in a cost of $6.72/1000 gallons of water.

The community adjacent to mine is home to about 77,000 people.  The solution for that community involves new water treatment plants, new wells, new water mains, and POETs for the (relative) handful of homes that cant be connected to the municipal system.  The price tag for that infrastructure is about $125,000,000 with a 20 year maintenance cost estimate of an additional $153,000,000.  It sounds like a lot, but the cost per 1000 gallons in that community is just $0.68…nearly 10x cheaper than the rate in my smaller community that lacks a municipal water system.  

Acknowledging the uncertainty associated with the expansion of the contamination plume as well as the changing understanding of the severity of PFAS health effects, predicting costs for development and maintenance of a drinking water solution as complex as this is a challenge.  If everything goes to plan, the overall bill for the infrastructure required to treat and maintain the PFAS solutions in our affected communities is $317 Million with a $5.5 Million yearly maintenance bill.  The total cost for building and maintaining PFAS water protections for 13 communities totalling 176,000 citizens for 20 years is $432 Million.   Including charges for planning and administration, this whole endeavor comes in pretty close to half a billion dollars.

The EPA says $9 billion dollars in the Infrastructure Law are earmarked for PFAS remediation of drinking water.  If it’s going to cost nearly half a billion dollars to address the PFAS problem in my tiny little slice of Minnesota, $9 billion may just a drop in the PFAS-contaminated bucket.

Find all the details here: https://3msettlement.state.mn.us/sites/3msettlement/files/2023-02/Summary-Final-Plan-chapters-8-10.pdf