Washington, DC: In response to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passing of bills to address dangerous PFAS contamination, the League of Conservation Voters and the Michigan League of Conservation Voters issued the following statements:  

“We’ve known about this widespread problem for years and communities in states like Michigan are confronting the crisis on their own without much urgency from federal agencies,” said Lisa Wozniak, executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. “That inaction has rightly led the U.S. Congress to step in and take leadership on bold legislation solutions so we can establish some fundamental safeguards for public health and drinking water.  We all know much more needs to be done and that will only come through further bi-partisan action on this crisis.  We need to protect people, clean up contamination, and hold polluters accountable for the mess that they’ve created across our country.”   

“We greatly appreciate that the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee is taking the PFAS crisis seriously, and while this is an important first step, we must go further, including listing all PFAS as hazardous under CERCLA (Superfund),” said LCV Deputy Legislative Director Madeleine Foote.  “Community after community continues to discover that its drinking water, food, soil, and families are all contaminated with PFAS chemicals that have been linked to numerous health problems like cancer, thyroid disease, neurological development issues, and more. For too long, states and localities have been forced to deal with this crisis on their own while the Trump administration has dragged its feet, and it’s time that Congress force the administration to step up. To truly tackle this crisis, we must regulate and ban the entire class of PFAS chemicals, clean up the contamination, and hold polluters accountable for knowingly jeopardizing our health and the environment.”

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