Stella residents hear PFAS update

Four years after a Department of Natural Resources well testing program led to the discovery of extreme levels of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) contamination in local drinking water, town of Stella residents gathered at their town hall on Oct. 20 to hear another update from state and federal officials on their ongoing efforts to provide assistance to those affected by the “forever chemicals”.

The meeting brought together the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state and county health officials and a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher. It came the same day the DNR launched two new grant programs that could pay for PFAS testing of private wells.

The new grant programs are the result of the passage of 2025 Wisconsin Acts 200 and 201 which freed $133 million in the state’s PFAS trust fund, DNR Northern Region Director Ann Kipper explained.

The PFAS Community Grants Sampling Program lets municipalities run their own testing of private wells, schools, childcare facilities and wastewater treatment plants. Eligible municipalities include counties, towns, tribes, lake districts and sewerage districts. The program covers 80% of sampling costs, said Jim Ritchie, the DNR’s director of Community Financial Assistance. The 20% local match can come from community funds, federal money or donations. The first application cycle runs through the end of April, and the DNR plans additional six-month cycles.

The Wisconsin PFAS Private Well Testing program lets private well owners outside a participating community request a home sample kit from the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene. The DNR said in a news release that less money is available through that program. It advised well owners to first ask local officials about community sampling plans.

Stella Town Chairman William “Casey” Crump told attendees he hopes to work with the Oneida County Health Department on a community grant application. He wants it to include retesting for residents whose wells were tested several years ago, and testing for residents outside the original sampling radius.

A third program, the expanded Well Compensation Grant, is expected to open this winter, around the first of the year, Ritchie said. It will pay for new wells, treatment systems, connections to water systems and abandonment of contaminated wells. The earlier ARPA-funded program capped eligibility at $100,000 in household income. The new program has no income cap and offers four tiers of cost share (100%, 80%, 60% and 25%) tied to county median household income.

The attendees also heard from Mark Pauli, the DNR Drinking Water Supervisor for northern Wisconsin, on the results of the expanded well testing announced last year.

According to Pauli, the DNR now has 286 well results from Stella and surrounding areas. Of those:

96 exceeded drinking water health advisory levels, and those households were offered temporary drinking water.

52 had PFAS detected below the advisory levels.

138 had no detections.

Sampling in five other townships (Crescent, Newbold, Pine Lake, Sugar Camp and Pelican) produced 226 results with 45 exceedances, Pauli said. The highest was 400 nanograms per liter, about 100 times the standard of 4 parts per trillion. Fish and deer consumption advisories remain unchanged, said DNR toxicologist Sean Strom. A do-not-eat fish advisory covers Starks Creek, Snowden Lake, Sunset Lake and the Moen Chain. Within five miles of the town hall, residents are advised to eat no more than one meal of deer muscle per month and no deer liver.

Erica Aultz of the EPA provided an update on the ongoing evaluation of the Stella site for potential inclusion on the federal Superfund list. Aultz said the agency is still in the early assessment stage of determining whether Stella qualifies for the National Priorities List (NPL), the formal name for Superfund sites. Superfund is a “method of last resort” for contamination that other federal, state or local authorities cannot address, she explained. Aultz explained that the data now point to two distinct clusters of contamination rather than one large circle. One centers on the town center and Snowden Lake. Soil results were in a similar range to 2024 sampling and well above screening levels, she said. PFOA levels in private wells were similar, while PFOS levels were lower. She said explaining the drop is outside her role. EPA sediment samples from the lake were also contaminated, she said.

Next year, the EPA will begin assembling a Hazard Ranking System package, Aultz said. That document makes the agency’s case for listing and is subject to public comment and possible litigation. A senior review between Region 5 and EPA headquarters is also required.

“NPL listing is not guaranteed,” she stressed, noting that headquarters wants assurance that every other cleanup authority has been explored. She also said only PFOA and PFOS can support a listing, because they are the only PFAS designated as hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law.

Asked about cleaning up Snowden Lake, Aultz said there are no plans at the federal level unless the site is listed.

Crump said he is skeptical listing would bring results. He cited more than 30 years of work with environmental hazards, including three Superfund sites on tribal lands in Michigan.

“I have not once seen a Superfund site be cleaned up,” he said.

One of those sites was a fuel depot on Lake Michigan that stayed on the list for decades without reaching the top for funding, he said. Crump also warned that listing can lower property values and restrict land use. He noted, though, that listing would put the EPA’s power behind efforts to recover cleanup costs from the companies (Ahlstrom and Wausau Paper, the current and former owner of the Rhinelander paper mill) designated by the DNR as responsible parties.

The two companies, as well as the chemical companies 3M and BASF, are also facing a federal lawsuit filed by a group of Stella residents who allege land-spreading of paper mill sludge, or fiber cake, from the Rhinelander mill, caused the contamination.

During a question-and-answer session that followed the presentations, Crump addressed a question about Ahlstrom’s efforts to help the town.

“Ahlstrom is obviously providing the drinking water out here for those that need it, and currently they are working under the DNR with a study or an assessment that they are doing to drill some pilot wells out here,” Crump said. “Some of you mentioned to me that you were asked to have a sampling well in your house or on your property. They sent us a letter, we got an email on Monday saying they sent us a letter. That email said we’re going to be out there Friday, and we’re going to look at where we’re going to put these. Well, we need you to meet us out there, and we’re going to start drilling next week. I’m like, excuse me, you’re going to do what … We’ve got to get it approved first. Now I know I think the residents out here. I think they mentioned that they had agreed to have one put on their property. So (that’s) just a simple signature. But for us to have it on town property, we have to approve it. So we’ve asked them to come to our next meeting in November and bring that up as a subject, and then we will be able to sign a contract. We just can’t sign it without board approval. That’s how we get ourselves in trouble. So, as far as being helpful with us, not very. I called them last year when they first started handing out the water, and I said, ‘Why aren’t you guys meeting with us? If you’re going to do this stuff, come out and meet with us. Meet with the public, tell them what you want to do. Come meet with our board and tell us what we want to do, and we’ll get the information out. Meet with our PFAS committee, and we’ll get the information out…”

A spokesperson for Ahlstrom offered the following response to Crump’s remarks.

“As a long-time employer in the area, it is important for us to be a dependable community partner. Proactively implementing a bottled water program to meet the needs of the community exemplifies that and represents our continued commitment to the region and our dedication to working towards a solution. In tandem with that commitment, when the bottled water program was implemented in January 2026, we pledged to support it through January 2027. We will evaluate the program and determine the next steps prior to its one-year anniversary.”

Health study

Amy Schultz, a UW-Madison environmental epidemiologist, provided an update on the four-year study she proposed at last year’s meeting, which has since received National Institutes of Health funding. The study, called RIPPLE, aims to enroll at least 400 residents age 6 and older. They will have blood tested for PFAS and cholesterol twice, two years apart. Participants will be paid $70 per visit. Mailed invitations are expected in December, with appointments beginning in January.