Source: http://www.dispatch.com, November 26, 2015
By: Earl Rinehart
DuPont has settled a 2009 lawsuit with a southeastern Ohio water district whose well fields were contaminated with the chemical used to make Teflon.
The Little Hocking Water Association signed an agreement with the chemical giant in U.S. District Court in Columbus on Monday. The details were not disclosed, said Dave Altman, a Cincinnati environmental lawyer who represented Little Hocking.
“The settlement has been reached,” Altman said, adding that both sides agreed not to comment on any monetary damages.
The water association also had demanded that DuPont prove it has stopped further contamination and that it provide an alternative water source.
Little Hocking is a nonprofit company that supplies water to schools, businesses and 12,000 people in Washington and Athens counties. It has 45 acres of wells across the Ohio River from DuPont’s Washington Works plant in West Virginia, where the company used C8 to manufacture Teflon.
DuPont installed filters in 2008 to scrub C8 from the water it released into the river. The association sued the next year, contending that the chemical was still infiltrating the aquifer beneath its well fields.
A study released in 2012 found probable links between C8 and conditions such as thyroid disease and testicular and kidney cancers. DuPont paid for the study to settle a complaint by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The company, facing personal-injury lawsuits numbering in the thousands, agreed this year to phase out its use of C8. The first such suit resulted in a $1.6 million award in October for a Coolville, Ohio, woman who said she had contracted kidney cancer from drinking C8-tainted water.
DuPont attorneys noted that the jury didn’t award punitive damages, which they said validated the company’s argument that it had not displayed a conscious disregard for the public.
The next case, involving a man from Parkersburg, W.Va., who blames his ulcerative colitis on C8, is scheduled for trial in federal court in Columbus in March.
Both suits are test cases. Based on their outcomes, there’s an expectation that some of the 3,500 pending cases could be settled, withdrawn or taken to trial.
DuPont provided bottled water to affected Little Hocking customers for two years, ending in 2007.