Leech Lake Band takes on 3M in lawsuit over PFAS contamination

CASS LAKE — The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe is taking on 3M in court over contamination found in the reservation’s resources.

In a federal lawsuit filed Monday, Oct. 13, the band alleges independent testing of fish and deer tissue, as well as testing of surface water on Pike Bay and Cass Lake, found “alarming” levels of different types of chemicals known collectively as PFAS.

“Due to ... PFAS contamination on and near the Reservation and confirmed toxic levels of PFAS in natural resources on the Reservation, the health and welfare of the Band’s members are at risk and will continue to be at risk until the contamination of the Band’s drinking water, ground and surface water, and natural resources are remediated,” stated the complaint.

PFAS are a class of human-made substances that have unique properties that include oil and water repellency, temperature resistance and friction reduction, which have been used in thousands of household and commercial products for decades.

Health studies have linked PFAS exposure to high cholesterol, thyroid disease, and kidney and testicular cancers, among other adverse health impacts, with emerging science on the effects of exposures to different types of PFAS.

In the litany of lawsuits against Minnesota-based 3M and Delaware-based DuPont, plaintiffs allege these companies knew of the detrimental health and environmental effects of their products since at least the 1970s, yet they continued to promote their use.

“PFAS’s mobility and persistence ensure that PFAS will continue to contaminate drinking water, surface water, groundwater, soil, and air on the Leech Lake Reservation, exposing people and wildlife to dangerous health effects, unless and until the PFAS contamination is treated, removed, mitigated, or otherwise cleaned up from the environment,” stated the civil complaint.

The Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School in Bena stopped using its drinking water system and has relied on bottled water since 2022 after PFAS levels, sourced to a type of floor wax, far exceeded what federal and state agencies deem safe.

Leech Lake Legal Director Chris Murray said Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig has a plan to build a new drinking water system from an uncontaminated groundwater source. But the costs to address PFAS across the Leech Lake Reservation far exceed what he analyzed the band would get out joining a multi-district settlement out of South Carolina —about $1,700.

"The damage from PFAS to both natural resources and then the long-term consequences on human health of the residents of the Reservation and the need for health monitoring, water quality sampling and testing of other natural resources to identify and then, hopefully as technology advances, remediate the PFAS contamination that has found its way to the Leech Lake Reservation,” he said.

Funding for this environmental story was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).