The Metropolitan Council is paying the 3M Co. about $1 million to settle lawsuits over pollution in the Mississippi River.
The settlement, announced by 3M on Monday, ends the lawsuits in which 3M and the Met Council blamed each other for traces of chemicals found in the river. It also ends the Met Council’s support of an environmental lawsuit being brought by the Minnesota attorney general.
On Monday, both sides declared victory.
The Met Council said the million-dollar payment settled a longstanding legal case that would have cost more in the long run.
“The settlement with 3M protects ratepayers from the high cost of prolonged litigation,” said council spokeswoman Bonnie Kollodge. “It ensures that funds will be used for the good of the environment.”
3M will spend the money in the metro area to remove the chemicals from groundwater and drinking water. The company has already spent more than $100 million doing the same thing, according to 3M documents released in 2012.
“3M is pleased to have settled all outstanding matters with the Met Council,” said 3M attorney William A. Brewer III, a partner at Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, in an email.
In 2012, twin lawsuits focused on a single question: Who is to blame for the pollution?
Chemicals manufactured by 3M were found in fish in the Mississippi River beginning in 2007. Small amounts of the chemicals have been found in lakes, rivers and even in the residents of Washington County, and remain to this day.
In a lawsuit, the Met Council blamed 3M.
3M manufactured the chemicals, called PFCs or perfluorochemicals. It legally dumped them in landfills, ending in the 1970s.
Traces of the chemicals — measured in parts per trillion — apparently seeped into groundwater. In 2004, the chemicals were detected in drinking water of about 65,000 people in Washington County.
So when the chemicals were found in the Mississippi, argued the Met Council, 3M must be to blame.
Not so, said 3M, in a 2012 countersuit. The company pointed a figure at another source — sewers.
3M stopped making the chemicals in 2002 — so the chemicals that were found as late as this year must come from somewhere else, 3M lawyers have argued.
The Met Council is at least partly responsible, said 3M, because it pumps the polluted water up from the ground, puts it into homes, then pipes it to treatment plants and the Mississippi River.
If 3M is to blame, argued the company, then so are the Met Council’s seven sewage plants.
Furthermore, 3M said that it and other companies manufactured the chemicals for decades, and traces have been found in animals and humans around the world.
Thus, it was hard to prove that pollution in a big river like the Mississippi came from one source, such as the underground plume of pollution in Washington County. It’s also possible, they said, that the chemicals used in fire extinguishers could have washed into the river from the site of fires.
The Minnesota attorney general sued 3M in 2010, seeking an unspecified payment for “damage to the environment” from the chemicals found in Minnesota rivers, lakes and groundwater.
The Met Council legally joined that lawsuit in 2011. But with this week’s announcement, the Met Council has dropped out of that suit.
A trial date for that lawsuit has not yet been set.
