Wausau Pilot & Review staff

City officials in Wausau are suing dozens of organizations over groundwater contamination caused by human-made chemicals, according to a news release issued Friday.

The lawsuit targets 15 chemical manufacturers and 61 insurance companies for their role in PFAS contamination in hopes of recouping some of the millions of dollars invested into providing safe and clean drinking water to local residents. The case was filed this week in Marathon County Circuit Court by Napoli Shknolnik, a national law firm that represents clients in complex environmental cases. Circuit Judge Greg Strasser has been assigned the case.

But the announcement comes with a markedly different time frame in which city officials acknowledged the contamination that affected every single Wausau drinking water well.

Mayor Katie Rosenberg, in a statement, said she learned of the contamination over the past two years. But as Wausau Pilot & Review previously reported, city officials knew of the contamination as early as 2019. Documents obtained by Wausau Pilot show that some officials were aware that the city would need to address toxic chemicals in drinking water while a new treatment facility was being planed, but did not inform the public.

Rosenberg, in her statement, said she is now demanding “that those responsible for the contamination are held accountable to the people of Wausau.”

“The people of Wausau trusted that those corporations that earned billions of dollars creating products that were in nearly every household in America, were doing so without putting our community’s health and resources at risk,” Rosenberg said.

Alder Tom Kilian, representing Wausau’s Dist. 3 and a founding member of the grassroots environmental group Citizens for a Clean Wausau, told Wausau Pilot & Review he had alerted the city about the inaccuracy in Rosenberg’s statement.

“This is a very serious inaccuracy, from my perspective, and I am perplexed as to why the municipality is averse to providing a factual timeframe,” Kilian said. PFAS contamination in the city’s wells was actually found four years ago.

Tests showed all of the city’s drinking water wells contained per- and poly-fluoroalkyl, PFAS, chemicals. The wells serve approximately 40,000 residents in the city.

The statement from the city said the “defendants purchased commercial general liability and excess umbrella insurance policies from the Insurance Company Defendants to cover liability, in whole or in part, for the City of Wausau’s injuries caused using PFAS and are therefore subject to suit by Wis. Stat. § 632.24.”

This appears to be at least the second lawsuit that Wausau has filed against companies over PFAS contamination. Wausau Pilot & Review has reached out to the mayor’s office for more details.

In June, the city filed a lawsuit against 3M and two dozen other companies over allegations that their products contaminated the municipal drinking water supply. The lawsuit was filed June 22 in federal court, the same day 3M announced a settlement in multi-district litigation over PFAS contamination.

That action followed after the Wausau City Council voted unanimously to move forward with a lawsuit against the manufacturers of PFAS.

The latest court action was filed Nov. 3o. Future court dates have not yet been set.