SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — This week, manufacturing company 3M agreed to pay more than $7 billion to people who became sick from PFAS-contaminated water. The company did not admit liability for the contamination in the agreement.
92 people from Spokane County joined a lawsuit alleging their water was contaminated by PFAS from firefighting foam used at Fairchild Air Force Base. The plaintiffs say the exposure puts them at increased risk for kidney cancer and several other diseases. Many also say their property was damaged by PFAS.
Attorneys who worked on the settlement expect about 90,000 people nationwide to qualify to receive money from it.
Hunter Shkolnik, an attorney involved in the case, said the outcome reflects a familiar pattern.
“Any time a company puts profits over safety, you get this type of situation. This is a classic case of profits over safety. They could have sold inert foam for pennies on the dollar, but they wouldn’t have the profits.”
Shkolnik also described the agreement’s scale.
“To reach a settlement like this, and this is not the only settlement. This is just against 3M, just one of the defendants, for $7.35 billion is monumental. There’s still more defendants, it’s going to grow.”
Shkolnik outlined the payout timeline.
“Most of the money is going to be there in five years. It’s going to start distributing in about a year. It’s a big process but we’ve already started this a year ago. We have everyone registered and we have a lot of data already on every plaintiff.”
Residents may still face a long wait. Class action lawsuits over PFAS-contaminated water have been ongoing for years, and payments could take years to reach people in Spokane.
More companies named in the lawsuits have not settled. Shkolnik says the next phase of the lawsuit will represent companies and organizations whose property was damaged by PFAS-contaminated water.
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