Gov. Tony Evers signed a pair of bills Monday that will release more than $133 million for communities to fight water contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in Wisconsin. 

The bill signing is the culmination of about three years of debate over the money. The state initially set $125 million aside in the 2023-25 state budget, but the total dedicated to fighting PFAS has grown to $133.5 million as interest accrued on the funds while it sat unused, according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo. The Town of Campbell, Marinette, the town of Stella near Rhinelander and French Island near La Crosse are just some of the communities in Wisconsin that have been managing PFAS pollution in local drinking water for years.

Evers called it a “historic” day for the state. 

“Today the people of Wisconsin can begin to have PFAS-free water,” Evers said. 

PFAS — also known as “forever chemicals” — are a large group of cancer-causing  chemicals that do not break down easily and have been used to make products including nonstick cookware, firefighting foam and fast food wrappers that are resistant to heat, grease, stains and water.

Under the laws, about $80 million will go to a community grant program to assist local governments in combating and remediating PFAS contamination in their communities, a little over $5 million will go to a grant programs for public airports and $35 million will go to expanding the Well Compensation Grant Program to assist homeowners and businesses with private wells to ensure their drinking water is safe from PFAS. The Well Compensation Grant Program will also be expanded to allow non-community water supplies, schools and child care facilities to receive funding. 

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will get 10 new positions and $1.3 million to help with managing conservation, fishery resources and trapper education, protecting the state’s water resources and for other agency responsibilities including communications, customer services, aids administration, watershed management and environmental analysis.

The laws also amend the state’s Spills Law to protect farmers, landowners, certain business owners and fire departments from being held responsible for PFAS contamination if it is discovered on their land and they did not cause it.

AB 130, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 200, includes the funding and AB 131, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 201, creates the new programs and requirements related to PFAS. 

“This will provide real relief to families and communities tackling the pressing threat of PFAS in local wells, municipal water systems and more,” Evers said, adding that the day has not come without challenges. “It’s been a long road, but this will make a real difference for families living with the challenges of people every day, so today, we’re here to chart a new path forward— one where folks can trust that the water coming from their tap is safe to drink.” 

Evers was joined by advocates, Department of Natural Resources Secretary Karen Hyun as well as a bipartisan group of state lawmakers including Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Gillett), Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz) and Rep. Renuka Mayadev (D-Madison). He thanked all of them for their work on the issue and emphasized the importance of working together to get it done. 

Evers said that it is always “worth the effort” to find a bipartisan way to get work done. Once the money was set aside in 2023, lawmakers and Evers disagreed on the framework for getting the money to communities. Evers vetoed a 2024 Republican bill, saying it limited the enforcement power of the DNR and wouldn’t do enough to combat the PFAS contamination challenges that Wisconsin faces.

Over the last year, lawmakers and Evers worked to get to a compromise that passed the Assembly and Senate unanimously. 

“This was a really important two bills, and the only way we were going to do it is that people compromise, give, take and win,” Evers said.

According to a DNR release, it will take time for the agency’s staff to get the programs going, and DNR will be prioritizing grants for sampling of private wells, schools, child care facilities and biosolids. The grants are expected to be available starting in the summer or fall of 2026.

Lee Donahue, the health, education and welfare supervisor for the Town of Campbell, said the laws were critical for the “healing and health” of people in affected communities. 

“Sadly, today I can quickly and easily say that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are toxic,” Donahue said. “I’ve seen how people’s exposure can devastate a community with kidney, testicular, ovarian, thyroid cancer, Parkinson’s disease, endocrine disruptions like polycystic ovarian syndrome, impacting women’s fertility, and the impacts on child development.” 

Donahue said the change in the law represents progress. 

“It lays the foundation for future PFAS legislation that will continue to protect Wisconsinites,” Donahue said. “For the 4,500 neighbors of mine and the town of Campbell and all those in Peshtigo, Stella Rib Mountain, and sadly, the list goes on and on, may this legislation accelerate your access to safe water.”

Wimberger, who alongside other Republicans fought for the provision absolving parties they termed “innocent landowners” from responsibility for contamination, celebrated the signing of the bills in a statement.

“At the heart of our reforms is an idea: the state should not treat landowners who discover PFAS contamination on their property like polluters. Through meetings and negotiations, that idea transformed into real policy that will protect innocent victims of PFAS across Wisconsin from unfair state action,” Wimberger said. “From French Island to Marinette and Madison to Stella, we’ll soon begin the important work of identifying and fighting PFAS contamination in lands and waters across our state.”

Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify the amount of money that is available. 

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The Wisconsin Legislature sent a $133 million plan to combat contamination from so-called forever chemicals to Gov. Tony Evers for his approval Tuesday, promising an end to years of squabbling between the Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers over the issue.

Evers said immediately after the Senate approved the bills Tuesday afternoon that he would sign them into law. The rare bipartisan compromise offers at least some hope for the scores of Wisconsin villages, towns and cities grappling with PFAS pollution in their groundwater.

“Beautiful. This has been a long time coming,” Campbell Town Supervisor Lee Donahue said of the Senate votes. Residents of the town of 4,300 have been drinking bottled water since state health officials warned them in 2021 that more than 500 wells were contaminated. Donahue said state dollars would help the town transition from private wells to a municipal water system treated for PFAS.

“This is definitely a day for celebration,” she said.

Communities across the U.S. struggling with PFAS

PFAS — short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are manmade chemicals that don’t easily break down in nature. They’re found in a wide range of products, including cookware and stain-resistant clothing, and previously were often used in aviation fire-suppression foam. The chemicals have been linked to health problems, including low birth weight, cancer and liver disease, and have been shown to make vaccines less effective.

Communities located near industrial sites and military bases nationwide are grappling with PFAS contamination. Government estimates suggest as much as half of U.S. households have some level of PFAS in their water — whether it comes from a private well or a tap. While federal officials have put strict limits on water provided by utilities, those rules don’t apply to the roughly 40 million people in the U.S. who rely on private drinking water wells.

Municipalities across Wisconsin are struggling with PFAS contamination in groundwater, including Marinette, Madison, Peshtigo, Wausau, the town of Stella and Campbell. The waters of Green Bay also are contaminated.

In Stella, for example, private wells were badly contaminated by PFAS-laden fertilizer spread on farm fields. The state has had limited resources to help, struggling to provide widespread free testing, and officials have offered only a limited grant program for well replacements.

‘Some forward movement’

Tom LaDue, a Stella resident, lives on the shores of a highly contaminated lake. He said the Senate signing off on the bills was a rare bit of good news for his town of 670 people. Testing has shown very little PFAS in his private well, but LaDue sits on a town committee that tracks PFAS developments and he knows dozens of people are living on bottled water. He said he hopes the town will get enough money to at least test private wells for pollution.

“We’ve been waiting for it for a long time,” he said of releasing the money. “We’ll be letting everyone in the town know this has passed and we’ll finally see, hopefully, some forward movement in our small town.”

Evers and Republicans have been at odds for years over how best to address the pollution. The 2023-25 state budget created a $125 million trust fund to combat PFAS contamination, but the two camps haven’t been able to agree on how to spend it.

Two years ago the governor vetoed a GOP bill that would have spent the money on grants for municipalities, landowners and waste disposal facilities to test for PFAS in water treatment plants and wells. But Evers said the bill limited state regulators’ authority to hold polluters liable, and environmental groups urged him to kill the proposal.

Compromise bills unlock tens of millions of dollars

The fund has grown to $133.4 million during the stalemate, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The chief sponsors of that original bill, Republican Sen. Eric Wimberger and Rep. Jeff Mursau, released two new proposals in January after discussions with the state Department of Natural Resources, an Evers Cabinet agency.

The first bill would spend $132.2 million from the PFAS trust fund for community grants, well replacements, airports and industrial properties and $1.3 million from the state’s general fund to cover 10 new state Department of Natural Resources positions to administer the spending.

The second proposal establishes a list of entities that would be exempt from liability for contamination, similar to the bill Evers vetoed in 2024. Included on the list are people who spread PFAS while in compliance with permits that did not address PFAS; landowners whose property was contaminated pursuant to a permit; owners of contaminated industrial property who didn’t cause the pollution; and fire departments that used PFAS in their foam. Businesses that own or operate facilities that currently or have used PFAS or have ever spread industrial waste could be held liable, however.

Bills generate overwhelming support

The Assembly passed both pieces of legislation unanimously on the last day of its regular two-year session in February. The Senate passed the bills overwhelmingly, approving one bill 33-0 and the other on a voice vote with almost no discussion.

“I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right,” Evers said in a statement.

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The Wisconsin Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that, once signed, will release $125 million set aside nearly three years ago to address PFAS contamination in the state’s water supplies. 

The vote, on the last day the Senate was scheduled to be in session for the year, was the culmination of a multi-year legislative saga involving negotiations between legislative Republicans, Gov. Tony Evers, the state Department of Natural Resources and a number of outside interest groups. 

A similar bill passed the Legislature during the last legislative session but was vetoed by Evers over objections from Democrats and environmental groups that the bill was too lenient to polluters responsible for PFAS contamination. 

The “innocent landowner” exemptions at issue in the first version of the bill were more narrowly constructed this time after a negotiation process with the DNR. Those changes drew the ire of the state’s largest business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and groups representing the state’s paper industry over concerns that industrial manufacturers such as paper mills were being singled out. 

The two-bill package passed unanimously in both legislative chambers despite the opposition from WMC, which is usually one of the largest supporters of Wisconsin Republicans. 

The bill’s author, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) noted on the floor Tuesday how “meticulously drafted” the final version was to make sure all the parties were on board. 

“The result is a bill that helps people who need to be helped and stops the government from going after people who are genuinely innocent of causing a hazardous discharge,” he said.

Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement that he was looking forward to signing the bill so the money could get out the door. 

“While I wish it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long for the Legislature to join me in this important work, I’m thrilled that these bills will soon be on the way to my desk so that we can get these critical and long-overdue investments out the door to the folks and families who need them,” Evers said. “Whether it’s kids in the classroom, families at home, or our farmers and agricultural industries, folks should be able to trust that the water coming from their tap is clean and safe. I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right.”

Under the bill, landowners who spread PFAS contaminated materials on farm fields under a DNR-authorized permit, local governments and airports that used PFAS-containing firefighting foams, solid waste disposal facilities and anyone who had PFAS move onto their property through shifting groundwater will not be held responsible for PFAS pollution under the state’s toxic spills law. 

The spills law allows the DNR to require property owners responsible for pollution to pay for testing and cleanup of that pollution. The risk that the PFAS legislation could undermine the spills law was the largest objection from environmental groups to the first version of the bill introduced in the last session. 

The second bill in the package creates the programs through which the $125 million will be spent. Those programs include grants to municipal water systems and private well owners, as well as expanding the state’s testing capabilities and studying the long-term effects of PFAS.

The $125 million was first set aside in the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget. Throughout that time, communities across the state have continued to be affected by PFAS contamination of their water supplies. Places including Marinette, the town of Stella near Rhinelander and French Island near La Crosse have been managing the pollution, which has been tied to birth defects and cancer, for years. 

Save Our Water, an advocacy group made up of residents of PFAS-affected communities, frequently complained throughout the long negotiations that the Legislature wasn’t working to enact standards for the acceptable level of PFAS pollution in the state’s groundwater. The state has established standards for PFAS in municipal drinking water and surface water, but not groundwater, which is the source of drinking water for residents across the state with private wells. 

In a statement, the organization celebrated the bill’s passage while noting they’ll continue to push for the creation of a groundwater standard. 

“This legislation will help impacted communities and innocent landowners who are forced to deal with PFAS contamination which they didn’t cause and don’t have the resources to clean up,” the group said. “[We] will continue to push forward to achieve a meaningful groundwater standard for PFAS and look toward using the bipartisan approach taken with this legislation as a model for future PFAS legislation.” 

Erik Kanter, the government affairs director of Clean Wisconsin, said this bill is only the first step as the state continues to manage the effects of widespread PFAS contamination, including the likelihood that even more money will need to be spent on the effort and the need for a groundwater standard. 

“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 32 months ago, and since then, people in Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the Town of Stella, and communities throughout the state have waited and waited for our state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. Now, an end to that waiting is finally in sight,” Kanter said in a statement. “The long, difficult work toward compromise on what should have been a straightforward spending bill is a telling sign that toxic PFAS contamination is evolving into a widespread, costly public health and environmental crisis — one that touches everyone from consumers to farmers and manufacturers. It’s a crisis our state cannot ignore. This must be the first of many actions from Wisconsin lawmakers to take real, meaningful action that protects all of us from these pervasive, harmful chemicals. The state must now establish PFAS groundwater standards to provide clean water protection for rural Wisconsinites on private wells.”

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More than 30 months after Gov. Tony Evers signed the 2023-25 biennial budget into law, setting aside $125 million to help Wisconsin communities mitigate PFAS pollution in the state’s drinking water, the Wisconsin Assembly on Friday unanimously passed two bills to get the money out the door. 

This is the second time legislation to spend the money has reached this point after Evers vetoed a PFAS bill in 2024 over objections that the bill was too friendly to polluters. Since the money was set aside, the issue has been mired in partisan feuding. 

As the Assembly scrambled to finish its work by its self-imposed Friday deadline before lawmakers head home to campaign for reelection, negotiations over the specific language of the legislation pushed the vote, initially scheduled for Thursday, past 8:30 p.m. on Friday evening. 

The two bills were among the last pieces of legislation the Assembly voted on in normal session before adjourning. 

The bill establishes programs to spend the money through grants for private well owners and municipal drinking water systems, boosting the state’s testing capabilities and research into PFAS at Universities of Wisconsin institutions. 

Republicans, with the support of business groups, have been trying to craft legislation that protects “innocent landowners” from being held responsible for PFAS pollution while Democrats and environmental groups have argued the initial bill too widely defined “innocent,” letting polluters off the hook while weakening the state’s toxic spills law. 

The return of the bill this session was met with renewed optimism that a bipartisan agreement could be reached. However, after Republicans narrowed the definition of innocent landowners, business groups such as Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and representatives of the state’s paper industry abandoned the effort, saying they couldn’t support the proposal anymore. 

Throughout the two and a half years of debate, residents of communities affected by PFAS pollution have continued to struggle, often calling for the Legislature to instead enact standards for the acceptable level of PFAS in the state’s groundwater — the source of drinking water for the hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites with private wells. 

PFAS pollution has affected larger communities such as Madison and Wausau and small communities such as French Island near La Crosse and the town of Stella near Rhinelander. The class of man-made chemical compounds was widely used in certain kinds of firefighting foams and household goods such as nonstick pans and fast-food wrappers. PFAS have been connected to health problems such as developmental problems in children and certain types of cancer. 

On the floor of the Assembly Friday evening, with lawmakers desperate to hit the road, only three representatives spoke on the bill. 

Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh), a member of the environment committee that produced the bills, touted the measures as a “great compromise” despite late-night final revisions to the bill, while Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse) recounted the “horrifying” struggles PFAS contamination has caused for her constituents on French Island. 

Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), one of the bill’s authors, said the bill is a “small step” toward fully solving the PFAS problem in the state but that the body was finally passing a bill that was the hardest to get across the finish line of his whole career in the Assembly. 

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), one of the co-authors and lead negotiators on the PFAS legislation, celebrated the compromise that came from long negotiations with Evers and the Department of Natural Resources. 

“Today’s vote in the Assembly will bring a massive, multiyear effort to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin even closer to fruition,” he said in a release sent before 6 p.m. Thursday, more than a day before the Assembly actually voted. “Wisconsinites across the state have suffered for far too long from PFAS polluting their land and water. Bill passage will put innocent communities and landowners on the best path forward to remediate PFAS while ensuring they are not punished or forced into bankruptcy over pollution they did not cause.”

In a week in which the Assembly broke through on a handful of issues that have long been mired in the Legislature’s partisan muck, Wimberger said the bipartisan compromise was notable. 

“Even a broken squirrel can find a clock twice a day,” he said.

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PFAS, sometimes known as forever chemicals, are a family of over ten thousand compounds with remarkable performance in applications like waterproofing, fertilizer, pesticides,...

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