Don’t wait for feds to act on PFAS

Some things are too important for our politicians to waste time pointing their fingers and dragging their feet. Ensuring we have clean drinking water should be one of them. But much of our drinking water is anything but clean, polluted with PFAS, known as forever chemicals because of their refusal to break down. Residents of French Island, along with many other cities across Wisconsin and across the nation have found their well water to be contaminated with these chemicals. The federal government is making addressing this a priority, but that will take time. In Madison, representatives want to set allowable state standards for the chemicals, prevent PFAS release into the environment and clean up contaminated sites. That makes sense. But others want the state to wait for the federal government to make its own rules governing the chemicals. The state’s largest lobbying organization even is filing lawsuits challenging the authority of the Wisconsin DNR to regulate the chemicals. We can’t wait that long. The DNR should be allowed to set state standards while the federal government gets its plans in place. Other states have done so. Wisconsin should as well. Or else our environmental health will certainly continue to get worse before it gets better.