By Eric Curl
May 25, 2024 – The city of Savannah is preparing to take legal action against manufacturers of “forever chemicals” threatening the sustainability of the region’s drinking water.
On Thursday, the Savannah City Council approved a resolution declaring that the man-made chemicals, known as PFAS, are a “public nuisance” that pose substantial health risks to the community, while placing significant financial burdens on federal, state and local governments.
The resolution authorizes City Attorney Bates Lovett to hold the responsible parties accountable, said Mayor Van Johnson.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has told us that this is a dangerous substance that we should remove,” Johnson said. “And we believe that we should not have our taxpayers pay for its removal.”
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The potential litigation comes after the Biden-Harris Administration issued the first national, legally enforceable drinking water standard to protect communities from exposure to PFAS, which have been linked to cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children. The EPA estimates about 6% and 10% of the 66,000 public drinking water systems subject to the rule may have to take action to meet the new standards, according to an April 10 press release announcing the new regulations.
For Savannah, levels of PFAS in water withdrawn from the Savannah River are above the EPA’s limit, and various treatment strategies are now under consideration which will likely result in significant cost increases to the drinking water production process, according to a city webpage about the issue.
“The goal here is to make those responsible for putting these chemicals in our water supply, get them out,” Lovett said Thursday. “And that’s what we are going to do.”
Such legal actions have proven successful in raising funding to remove the chemicals from water systems. Chemical manufacturer 3M will begin payments starting in the third quarter to many U.S. public drinking water systems as part of a multi-billion-dollar settlement over PFAS contamination, as reported in April by the Associated Press.
As of Thursday, the city was not able to provide details such as the identities of the manufacturers that the city may be taking to court since the litigation is still pending, according to city spokesperson Joshua Peacock.
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