STELLA, Wis. (AP) — Kristen Hanneman made a small decision in 2022 that would upend life for her entire town.
State scientists were checking private drinking water wells across Wisconsin for a family of harmful chemicals called PFAS. They mailed an offer to test the well outside her tidy farmhouse surrounded by potato farms cut out of dense forest. Without much thought, she accepted.
Months later, Hanneman found herself on the phone with a state toxicologist who told her to stop drinking the water — now. The well her three kids grew up on had levels thousands of times higher than federal drinking water limits for what are commonly known as forever chemicals.
Hanneman’s well was hardly the only one with a problem. And the chemicals were everywhere. Pristine lakes and superb hunting made Stella a sportsman’s dream. Now officials say the fish and deer should be eaten sparingly or not at all.
Many residents here have known their neighbors for decades. If they want to move away from all this, it’s hard to sell their property – who, after all, would want to buy?
“Had I just thrown that survey in the garbage,” Hanneman said, “would any of this be where it is today?”
Stella is far from the only community near industrial sites and military bases nationwide where enormous amounts of PFAS have contaminated the landscape, posing a particular threat to nearby well owners.
Forever chemicals get their name because they resist breaking down, whether in well water or the environment. In the human body, they accumulate in the liver, kidneys, and blood. Research has linked them to an increased risk of certain cancers and developmental delays in children.
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. But 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 United States who rely on private drinking water wells.
Short of a random test, as in Stella, few may learn their water is tainted with the odorless, colorless chemicals.
At least 20 states do not test private wells for PFAS outside of areas where problems are already suspected, according to a survey of state agencies by The Associated Press. Even in states that do, residents often wait years for help and receive far fewer resources than people tied into municipal tap water.
PFAS are so common because they are so useful. Uniquely able to repel moisture and withstand extreme temperatures, the chemicals have been critical to making waterproof shoes, nonstick cookware, and foam that could extinguish the hottest fires.
When the chemicals reach soil or water, as they have near factories and waste sites, they are extremely difficult to remove. North Carolina saw an early example, with well owners downstream from a PFAS manufacturing plant still dealing with tainted water years later. In rural northwest Georgia, communities are reckoning with widespread contamination from PFAS that major carpet manufacturers applied for stain resistance.
Robert Bilott, an environmental attorney who pursued one of the first major lawsuits against a PFAS manufacturer in the late 1990s, said many states don’t have the money to help.
The well owners — the victims of the contamination — shouldn’t have to be paying,” he said. “But where’s this money going to come from?”
Well owners often the last to know about contamination
The alarming results from Hanneman’s well triggered a rush of testing, beginning with the wells of nearby neighbors and later expanding miles away.
How the chemicals infiltrated water beneath Stella’s sandy soil was initially a mystery. State officials eventually suspected the paper mill in the small city of Rhinelander, a 10-mile (16-kilometer) drive from town. The mill had specialized in making paper for microwave popcorn bags — a product that was greaseproof thanks in part to PFAS.
The mill’s manufacturing process also produced a waste sludge that could be used as a fertilizer. By 1996, and for decades after with state approval, the mill spread millions of pounds on farm fields in and around Stella. Wisconsin officials now believe the PFAS it contained seeped into the subterranean reserves of groundwater that feed lakes, streams, and many residential wells.
In September, the state sent initial letters assigning cleanup and investigation responsibilities to current and former owners of the mill. These companies point out that the state permitted their sludge spreading, starting long before the dangers of PFAS were widely understood.
In a statement, Ahlstrom, the Finnish company that has owned the mill since 2018, said it hasn’t used two of the most common types of PFAS found in Stella wells in its manufacturing process, and that it phased out all other types of PFAS in 2023.
“We’re doing the best that we can with the funding that we have available,” said Mark Pauli, a drinking and groundwater supervisor.
The EPA has allocated billions to states for PFAS treatment and testing, but much of that money goes to public utilities. Federal officials are evaluating Stella for inclusion in the Superfund program, a large-scale decontamination process that would take years. They also partnered with Wisconsin officials to expand well sampling in July.
In a statement, Chemours said its timeline for testing wells depends on factors outside its control, including whether residents allow it, and that of the roughly 1,250 wells it sampled last year, 12% had PFAS.
“Groundwater does not follow lines drawn on a map,” Furton said. “There’s nothing to say that, OK, the PFAS stops there.”
As in Stella, the company tested in a slowly expanding radius that grew by quarter-mile segments from its plant. Chemours agreed to keep testing wells until it reached the edge of the polluted area — a process it expected to take 18 months.
Residents along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina have seen just how far forever chemicals can spread. In 2017, the Wilmington StarNews revealed that PFAS from a Chemours chemical plant in Fayetteville were washing into the river and contaminating the water supply.
The problem in Stella remained hidden because well owners don’t have a utility testing their water.
The crisis in Stella sparked by the test of her own well drove Kristen Hanneman to run for a town leadership role.
Though some Stella residents have been able to access grant funding to drill deeper wells to reach clean water, the help was limited by household income, with some families disqualified if they made more than $65,000. Typically, the most a family could receive was $16,000 — about half of what it may cost for a replacement well.
“Do we spend $20,000 to $40,000 on a new well for it to still be a problem?” Hanneman said.
But the state doesn’t require another type of sludge — treated waste from septic systems, which capture household sewage — to be tested for PFAS. A local septic company has been spreading it in Stella — in 2024 alone, it applied hundreds of thousands of gallons to farms and elsewhere, and experts warn against the dangers of such practices without adequate testing. “When you find yourself in a hole, it is best to stop digging,” said an expert.
