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The management of 3M has agreed to pay $10.3 billion to settle host communities in the U.S. to resolve water pollution claims tied to ‘forever chemicals’.
The chemical company announced on Thursday that it would pay $10.3 billion to U.S. cities and towns for 13 years to clean the cities of chemical substances contaminating drinking water.
The chemical company, facing about 4,000 lawsuits over PFAS contamination, did not admit any liability. The company said the money will cover the remediation of public water suppliers that detected PFAS “at any level or may do so in the future.”
The chairman of 3M, Mike Roman, called the agreement “an important step forward for 3M” and said it was built on “our announcement that we will exit all PFAS manufacturing by the end of 2025.”
The settlement, which requires court approval, would end legal claims, including a test case brought by the city of Stuart and Florida.
The chemical-producing company has set a deadline of December 2025 to stop producing PFAS.
In 2018, the city of Stuart claimed that the company sold firefighting foams containing PFAS that polluted local soil and groundwater, and they demanded $100 million for filtration and remediation.
The lawsuit followed a similar agreement with Chemours, DuPont and Corteva, which agreed on June 2 to pay $1.19 billion to the U.S. cities, which will be used to remove PFAS from public drinking water systems.
The PFAS is an “urgent public health and public health and environmental issue,” according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
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