(7/8) At its July 6 workshop, The Taneytown City Council heard updates of the lawsuit moving forward regarding groundwater contaminant Perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCA) from City Attorney Jay Gullo.

The city has officially joined the nationwide lawsuit, which is ready to be filed in South Carolina in federal court. All municipal cases are being consolidated to a class action lawsuit. The issue regards big companies including 3M and DuPont, Gullo said.

The city is requesting a jury trial, and once it all gets scheduled the judge will combine the case and discussion will begin regarding how to resolve the matter.

"I would not account spending any money on this for a couple years, but it is definitely going to grow," Gullo said.

At its February 14 meeting, the Council approved a legal service agreement with the law offices of Baron and Budd to join a class action lawsuit involving chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl substances (PFA) found in manufactured products, such as firefighting foam. Elements of PFA have been discovered leached into the groundwater.

Aqueous film forming foam, (AFFF), is a firefighting foam used at one time to fight chemical , but no longer used.

"These substances were placed in these materials by the manufacturers, and they knew at the time they were forever chemicals," he said.

The suit has been around since 2020 and many municipalities have gotten involved. "The good news is we’re not the worst in the state," he said, "It is an existing condition that has existed for some time, we are just getting aware of the situation."

Taneytown has had a successful working relationship with nationwide firm Baron and Budd in a prior class action lawsuit. The firm helped the City win hundreds of thousands of dollars in a lawsuit regarding MTBE chemicals in gasoline products that leached into and affected groundwater nationwide, Gullo said.

In June, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a warning regarding AFFF, although there is no official minimum contaminant limit yet issued.

As the EPA gets its hands around the issue, it will be able to define standards of acceptable quantities of PFAs in drinking water, at which time the City may or may not have to take financial action.

"The city is likely facing unknown costs down the road because we don’t know what the level of contamination will eventually be, or how we will clean it up, and what that cost will be," Gullo said in February.