MADISON, WI – Today, Governor Tony Evers announced additional budget items to address PFAS, as well as a new rulemaking effort to strengthen PFAS standards statewide. Rep. Palmeri (D-Oshkosh) released the following statement:

“Today, the Governor announced additional budget items and rulemaking efforts to address concerns surrounding clean, safe, and accessible water in Wisconsin. These budget items total to a $145 million dollar investment including, but not limited to:

·         Creating a PFAS Community Grant Program to assist municipal drinking water systems with testing for and eliminating PFAS from drinking water through the Safe Drinking Water Loan Program;

·         Helping private well owners sample and test their private wells through a new County PFAS Well Testing Grant Program;

·         Protecting innocent landowners like farmers who unknowingly spread bio solids containing PFAS on their land from having to foot the bill for the cleanup;

·         Increasing bio solid sampling, testing, and remediation for PFAS in bio solids and allocate $7 million in new funding to help innocent landowners and farmers remediate PFAS contamination;

·         Adopting the Chemical Level Enforcement and Remediation (CLEAR) Act, which will make several changes to Wisconsin’s laws aimed at improving water quality across our state. This includes an exemption from the “REINS Act” when the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is setting PFAS standards.

“These budget items work to address PFAS and other contaminants in Wisconsin’s water and each day that goes by without action puts Wisconsinites at risk for the sake of partisan politics. Governor Evers also announced a new rule making effort to adopt groundwater standards for 6 PFAS variants to strengthen standards statewide. The variants include:

·         perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA);

·         perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS);

·         perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS);

·         perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS); and

·         hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA, commonly known as GenX Chemicals).

“This decision is in response to the lack of action taken by the majority party on a ground water drinking standard proposed years ago; set to expire on March 12th, 2025. This marks the 12th time DNR has requested groundwater standards since Wisconsin’s groundwater law went into effect in the 1980s.

“While Republican lawmakers still have the ability to take up the groundwater drinking standard before March 12th, the Governor’s actions today are proactive. As minority-ranking member on the Committee on Environment, one of our highest priorities needs to be protecting our children, families, farmers, and communities from these harmful contaminants. I am hopeful we can work across the aisle this session to address an issue that does not discriminate amongst party lines.”