In 2021, Plaintiffs’ counsel representing a large number of public water systems contaminated by per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) retained SWAPE to develop the materials needed to negotiate a settlement with Defendants.  Plaintiffs’ consisted of cases consolidated in the Aqueous Film-Forming Foams (AFFF) Products Liability Litigation MDL No. 2873 as well as other impacted PWSs nationwide.  Therefore, a settlement model would require estimating damages for all PWSs impacted by PFAS due to AFFF releases across the United States.

Rob Hesse, P.G. was retained to build a nationwide database of PFAS impacts to PWSs. This work required obtaining data from the U.S. EPA, state regulatory agencies, and other sources, normalizing and compiling this data into a database, and processing the data to produce various reports, statistics, and damage estimates. Mr. Hesse initiated and managed the acquisition, design, and development of a database of PFAS water sampling results and initiated and co-managed the development of a damages allocation model for settlement negotiations.

After participating in several data exchanges with Defendants’ experts and providing extensive data summaries and reports to Plaintiffs’ counsel, settlement with the largest Defendants were reached with 3M and DuPont in the Summer of 2023.  3M agreed to pay up to $12.5 billion over 13 years to support PFAS remediation in U.S. public water systems. Chemours, DuPont, and Corteva reached a settlement of $1.18 billion shortly thereafter.  These settlements were the largest water pollution settlements in U.S. history.