Chrome plater will pay $1.4 million for PFAS contamination in Minneapolis lakes

A chromium plating company in St. Louis Park has agreed to pay $1.375 million in damages after the state said it polluted three metro area lakes with PFAS.

State regulators first focused in on Douglas Corp., a plater on Xenwood Avenue, as a potential source of the chemicals in 2008. The company is accused of releasing both PFAS and hexavalent chromium into a stormwater system that contaminated Bass Lake in St. Louis Park, and Bde Maka Ska and Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, according to the settlement agreement.

In the agreement, the state asserts that Douglas is responsible for damaging the environment with pollution, while Douglas maintains it's not liable. The settlement amount is the fourth largest reached in the state since a program to collect money for damage to natural resources began in 1995.

Jess Richards, an assistant commissioner with the Department of Natural Resources, said in an interview that the money from the settlement would be available for projects to improve the watershed where the contaminants were released. The cities of St. Louis Park and Minneapolis and the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District could all propose uses for the funds, he said.

John Fudala, a spokesman for Douglas, wrote in an email that the company has complied with regulations from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and that it is working to eliminate the use of all PFAS chemicals, of which there are thousands of formulations.

Douglas was already bound by a 2016 agreement with MPCA that required the company to make several changes to cut down on releases of the chemicals. State investigators found that PFAS fumes had been vented to the company's roof, where the chemicals collected and then ran off with rain or snow melt.

One of the changes included replacing the roof, where so many chemicals had collected it "was acting as a secondary source," according to Kirk Koudelka, assistant commissioner with the MPCA.

PFAS chemicals, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, build up in the bodies of animals and humans that ingest them and are linked to certain cancers and developmental problems.

PFOS, one of the original PFAS formulations, was first detected in Bde Maka Ska by University of Minnesota researchers in 2004. MPCA later tested fish tissue and found the chemical there, too.

Douglas stopped using that particular compound in 2010, and the levels of the chemical found in fish in the lake subsequently fell, according to a news release from MPCA.

Fudala wrote that Douglas found out only after it started using certain products that they contained PFOS.

Hexavalent chromium is a known carcinogen that causes lung cancer if inhaled, according to the National Institutes of Health. Platers have traditionally used PFAS chemicals to suppress the release of chromium into the air.

"Douglas is a case of why we need to stop using PFAS," Koudelka said. The company may have reduced the amount of the chemicals that escaped, but "it's important for us to prevent these releases in the first place."

Minnesota is quickly moving towards such a prohibition, as lawmakers reached a historic agreement on environmental legislation Wednesday that includes a broad ban on products that contain PFAS.

PFAS chemicals are also decreasing over time as officials test fish in Bde Maka Ska and Lake Harriet, according to Angela Preimesberger, a research scientist at the Minnesota Department of Health.

But there are still strict fish consumption guidelines for several species in both lakes, including a recommendation that most people do not eat more than one meal of them a month.

Even though the amounts of chemicals have gone down, "the risk associated with PFAS exposure has been going up," Preimesberger said