Hastings Sues 3M Over PFOA in City Drinking Water Wells

TLDR

Hastings sued 3M on August 26 over PFOA contamination in five city drinking water wells.
The city says the chemical came out of smokestacks at 3M's Cottage Grove plant and blew southeast onto Hastings soil for decades.
Wells 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 all need treatment to meet a new federal limit.
Hastings turned down a national settlement to sue on its own, and demanded a jury trial.
Much of the lawsuit is a timeline of what the city says 3M knew going back to the 1970s.
3M denies it caused the contamination and called the lawsuit "unfortunate."
3M has to respond in court by September 16.

So Hastings just did something the city has been circling for years. On August 26, it sued 3M in Dakota County District Court over the forever chemicals sitting in our drinking water wells. And the lawsuit doesn't hedge — it says 3M knew for decades, said nothing, and left us with the bill.

Here's what's actually in it.

Five of Our Wells Are Contaminated

The lawsuit says wells 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 all have PFOA in them above the new federal limit. That's a big chunk of the system that serves about 23,000 residents and more than 7,500 water customers.

For the record, those are wells at 520 State Street, 1309 W 23rd Street, 850 Spiral Boulevard, 401 W 9th Street, and 395 E 21st Street. Each one is a drilled bedrock well, pulling water from deep rock.

PFOA is one specific forever chemical. The federal limit is now 4 parts per trillion — think four drops in 20 swimming pools. That sounds tiny, and it is, but it's a legal limit, not a suggestion. Go over it and the city has to treat the water. Period.

Look at how fast that standard moved. EPA's health advisory in 2009 was 400 parts per trillion. In 2016 it recommended staying under 70. In April 2024 it set an enforceable limit of 4, and in May 2025 the federal government said it would keep it there. Water that passed under the old numbers doesn't pass under the new one. You can read EPA's own explanation on its PFAS drinking water page.

Here's the detail that stings. Hastings wants to drill a new well 9 to keep up with demand. A footnote in the complaint says the city "has not found a location without PFOA to install the well." The city went looking for a clean place to drill and couldn't find one.

The City's Theory: It Came Out of a Smokestack

This is the part that makes the lawsuit different from most forever-chemical cases.

Most of them are about groundwater — contamination seeping underground from a plant to a well. Hastings isn't claiming that. In fact the complaint says the opposite: there's no established groundwater pathway from Cottage Grove, under the Mississippi River, to our wells. It even argues 3M pumps so much groundwater at its own site — over a billion gallons in 2022, per a federal report cited in the filing — that it pulls water toward the plant, not away from it.

So Hastings makes a different argument. The PFOA went up 3M's smokestacks as air pollution. The prevailing wind at Cottage Grove blows northwest to southeast. Hastings sits southeast, a few miles away. The chemical came down on our soil, and Hastings has shallow water tables and porous ground, so it worked its way into the wells over decades.

The city backs it with 3M's own records. According to the complaint, 3M made PFOA at Cottage Grove from 1947 to 2002 and was the only U.S. manufacturer for most of that run. It reported making 2,522,000 pounds of finished PFOA goods there between 1976 and 1998. It has acknowledged there were no emissions controls in place between 1954 and 1974. And a federal health agency, using 3M's own estimates, reported roughly 1,950 pounds of PFOA compounds released from vent stacks in 1997 alone — on 100 to 200 days that year. That same agency has found airborne PFOA can travel up to 800 kilometers under certain conditions.

Then there's the fingerprint. The complaint says the PFOA in Hastings' wells contains both linear and branched isomers — a specific chemical structure — and that 3M was the only company in the United States making PFOA that way.

Hastings also narrowed the case on purpose. It's suing over PFOA only, not PFOS, and it specifically disclaims firefighting foam plus a list of other local sites including the old Pine Street Dump, King's Cove Marina, and a 1996 barge fire on the Mississippi. Giving up those claims makes 3M's easiest defense — "it could have come from anywhere" — much harder to run.

The Documents Hastings Is Pointing At

A big chunk of the complaint isn't chemistry. It's a calendar.

The city alleges 3M studied PFOA starting in the 1970s and kept what it found in-house. In 1978, studies on monkeys and rats showed effects on the liver and gastrointestinal tract, and 3M documented that PFOA "should be regarded as toxic" — with those aware of the results urgently recommending immediate steps to reduce exposure. A 1979 internal document called PFOA "completely resistant to biodegradation" and found it would leach from soils into water, which is exactly the mechanism Hastings now blames for its wells.

In 1987, per the complaint, 3M knew of a two-year study where rats fed PFOA developed cancerous tumors.

Then the sharpest detail. In 1997, 3M gave its main PFOA customer, DuPont, a safety data sheet reading: "CANCER WARNING: Contains a chemical which can cause cancer." The complaint says that sheet went only to DuPont.

3M began phasing out PFOA around 2000 under EPA pressure and stopped making it at Cottage Grove in 2002. In 2006, EPA cited and fined the company for failing to notify the agency about "substantial risk information" on PFOA.

None of this has been tested in court. It's one side's version, written to persuade a jury.

Hastings Walked Away From the Group Settlement

There was a national settlement where 3M agreed to pay public water systems across the country — the City of Camden case, filed in federal court in South Carolina. Hastings opted out. On purpose, and on time.

The city also isn't asking for money from Minnesota's 2018 $850 million settlement with 3M. It already received some of that, including $13.7 million tied to Well #5, and this case is separate.

Group settlements trade certainty for a formula-based share that rarely matches any one city's real costs. Hastings looked at its bill, looked at its evidence, and decided its own case was worth more than an average slice. That's a bet — the certain money is gone now, and it's up against a company with enormous legal resources on a theory that hasn't been widely tested.

What It Costs, and What Hastings Wants

Hastings is building three water treatment plants, each full of giant charcoal filters designed to strip PFOA out. The complaint calls the price "tens of millions of dollars" plus at least hundreds of thousands a year to keep running. The city's own numbers put the three-plant total around $70.3 million. Only the central plant is under construction so far.

The lawsuit asks 3M to cover the investigation, the testing and monitoring, the alternate water supply, the plants themselves, wellhead treatment and its ongoing operation, plus interest and attorney fees. It also asks the court to order 3M to clean up the ongoing contamination or pay Hastings to do it.

No dollar figure appears in the complaint. Damages would be proven at trial.

That money question deserves its own explanation, especially the part where it shows up on your utility bill. We broke down the full cost and what it's doing to water rates here →

What 3M Says

3M isn't conceding anything. The company told CBS News Minnesota that "the City's decision to pursue litigation is unfortunate," and pointed to its 2018 commitment of $850 million to address PFAS in Minnesota and a 2024 commitment of $10.3 billion to help public water suppliers nationwide.

In August 2024, 3M said any connection between the PFOA in Hastings and its Cottage Grove plant "has not been sufficiently established." It has also called the levels in our wells "trace levels" that are "safe based on decades of research."

The complaint fires back with something 3M said more recently to Minnesota regulators — that PFOA is the "primary driver for water treatment at the Hastings municipal wells." Whether that's an admission or just a description of the chemistry is the kind of thing lawyers argue about for years.

Also Worth Knowing

Hastings demanded a jury trial.
The city filed six separate legal claims, including negligence, public nuisance, and trespass.
Hastings hired outside firms for this: Lockridge Grindal Nauen out of Minneapolis and Pawa Law Group from Massachusetts, a firm known for environmental litigation.
Well 5 isn't part of this lawsuit. It's tied to the earlier settlement money instead.

The Bottom Line

Your water is being treated to meet the federal limit — that's what the plants are for, and the city keeps current information on its PFAS updates page. This lawsuit isn't about whether the cleanup happens. It's about who writes the check.

Next date to watch: 3M has to respond in court by September 16. After that, expect this to move slowly — big environmental cases usually take years, and this one rests on a causation theory that hasn't gotten the same legal mileage as groundwater cases. If it holds up, it matters well beyond Hastings, for any community downwind of a chemical plant. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has tracked east metro 3M PFAS contamination for years.

For the local backdrop on everything else Hastings is juggling, we've covered the 1,500-unit housing gap, a proposed 160-acre development in north Hastings, and the Highway 61 overhaul.