Michael Phyllis

PFAS are very useful in general in the manufacturing process for things like resistance to water or resistance to heat.

Firefighting foam is something commonly made with PFAS.

Over long periods of time, they can create health risk.

Everything from developmental delays in kids to increased risk of certain kinds of cancers.

And that's because the substance can kind of sit in your body and create problems, especially sitting in livers and kidneys and the like.

There was a paper mill about 10 miles away.

For years, it spread sludge on some of the farm fields there.

And they suspect that the sludge contained PFAS for many years.

that got into the soil.

So you end up having a pretty direct path from that spreading into all the private wells that are in the area.

There's no municipal water in that town.

A couple months later, she gets a phone call from the state toxicologist letting her know that there's a huge issue and she should not be drinking the water.

And the issues around Stella kind of blew up from there.

They had testing that had to be expanded.

They've had no hunt orders on parts of deer and fish.

And it's really kind of overturned the community there.

In the end, you're dealing with a years-long fight or problem-solving exercise to figure out how this can be fixed and how much it needs to be fixed for what amount of money.

And that can be really problematic for communities that don't quite know how to deal with it and really what their options are.

They didn't expect it.