MADISON — Area residents will have to wait for Madison’s next move on PFAS funding.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Senate Bill 312, which addressed PFAS, last week and called out the Republican-controlled Joint Committee on Finance (JFC) for not attending his meeting to discuss the next steps.
“[The] $125 million in funding approved through the 2023-25 biennial budget to fight PFAS statewide has languished unspent in Madison for over nine months — 286 days,” Evers said in a press release. “Wisconsinites expect elected officials to show up and put politics aside to find common ground and do the right thing—they deserve a hell of a lot better than what they’re getting from Republicans today.”
However, Republican Senator Eric Wimberger , who didn’t attend the meeting, said the governor’s attempt to get the committee together was disingenuous. He also said that each Democrat on the JFC voted against putting the $125 million in the 2023 budget.
“While PFAS-affected families suffer, Democrats would rather stage publicity stunts than actually listen to the needs of impacted communities,” Wimberger said in a press release. “The same Democrats calling for these funds to be released voted against including them in the budget. If Democrats on the budget committee are actually serious about helping PFAS victims get clean water, I look forward to their vote to override the Governor’s veto.”
As the Democrats and Republicans exchange their points of view, both acknowledge that the affected communities are losing out.
Evers said he sent a letter to Sens. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) and Wimberger, the bill’s authors, stressing that they would need to allow the Department of Natural Resources to continue formulating groundwater standards for PFAS contamination for him to support the bill.
He said he also directed the DNR to submit two requests to release the funding that were ultimately not acted upon by the JFC.
His initial opposition concerned the limiting of DNR’s ability to enforce action against big polluters.
“Senate Bill (SB) 312 was advanced through the legislative process with controversial ‘poison pill’ provisions designed to benefit polluters that could have functionally given polluters a free pass from cleaning up their own spills and contamination that Gov. Evers and the DNR had insisted was a non-starter from the beginning,” according to a press release from his office.
His veto of the bill doesn’t change the fact that $125 million, approved in the budget, could be released, he said.
“Republican members of the JFC may release the $125 million secured through the biennial budget to fight PFAS statewide at any time—as has been the case for the last 286 days,” Evers said.
Wimberger’s SB312 focused on protecting landowners hesitant to report PFAS on their property and created a grant program for the $125 million. He said that the governor claimed that these focuses would benefit polluters.
“Critics of the bill have failed to identify how the narrowly tailored protections for victims would benefit polluters,” Wimberger said. “Legal memos from the non-partisan Legislative Council, sent to the Governor by the author, dispute this, saying that PFAS manufacturers and other polluters would not qualify for protections. The legislature’s PFAS relief plan was supported by all three statewide local government associations representing every level of local government in Wisconsin — including dozens of PFAS-affected communities across the state.”
He said victims are hesitant to report any PFAS contamination on their land because there is much at stake.
“Even just the threat of enforcement orders by the DNR destroys land value upon detection, causing banks to refuse to refinance and call in their loans,” Wimberger said. “Innocent landowners in the path of a pollution plume are treated just like polluters and can be obligated by DNR to potentially pay millions of dollars for well testing and remediation, while also facing $5,000 fines per day for noncompliance. It is unconscionable that the DNR’s ‘solution’ is for neighbors to sue each other, and then join forces in court against international corporations to be made whole. It does not have to be that way.”
Wimberger said the governor’s requests did not match what the bill was intended to do, which was why the JFC did not act upon them.
“This latest request, which he falsely claims is ‘functionally identical’ to the legislature’s PFAS relief plan, borrows fragments of just two of the 19 provisions,” Wimberger said.
Wimberger said the governor’s proposal cut provisions affecting nine critical issues, including protections for “innocent landowners,” state loans, and remediation at sites that lack a responsible party.
Evers said the standalone bill wouldn’t have released the money from the budget and was “something the DNR has repeatedly argued is unnecessary given the agency’s existing programs.”
He said there had been no indication when the funds would be released.
“These investments the Legislature and I both already approved should have been released weeks and months ago, and there is no excuse for them to still be sitting in Madison while these challenges facing our communities get more difficult and more expensive with each day of delay,” Evers said. “Make no mistake—I’m not going to let up on this issue, I am going to continue fighting for these funds to be released, and I am directing my office to examine any and all options, including litigation, to end this unconstitutional obstruction.”
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