Gov. Evers, DNR Celebrate PFAS Awareness Week, Highlight Evers Administration’s Efforts to Ensure Safe, Clean Water Statewide

“For the past nearly eight years, we’ve made access to safe, clean drinking water a top priority of my administration—and a big part of that effort has been addressing PFAS,” said Gov. Evers. “PFAS contamination impacts far too many folks and families across the state, which is why I am proclaiming the first-ever PFAS Awareness Week in Wisconsin to recognize and celebrate the incredible work folks are doing all across Wisconsin to put an end to this issue now and forever. I am incredibly proud of the work my administration has done to make sure everything from our public water systems and private wells to our lakes and rivers and fishing are free of harmful contaminants, and in the days and months ahead, we will continue to build on that good work and ensure clean water for generations of Wisconsinites to come.”

PFAS are a group of human-made chemicals used for decades in numerous products, including non-stick cookware, fast food wrappers, stain-resistant sprays, and certain types of firefighting foam. During manufacturing, use, and disposal of materials that contain PFAS, these chemicals have reached the environment where they resist degradation. As PFAS cycle through the land, air, and water, they can accumulate in the bodies of humans and wildlife and may cause adverse health impacts.

To kick off PFAS Awareness Week, Gov. Evers and the DNR encourage Wisconsinites to explore the DNR’s website for resources about PFAS and the PFAS Interactive Data Viewer to learn about how PFAS may impact local communities statewide. Throughout the week, DNR will continue its social media campaign informing Wisconsinites about PFAS, how Wisconsinites are exposed to PFAS through water, fish and wildlife, and consumer products, and specific actions that individuals can take to reduce their exposure and potential risk.

Gov. Evers declared 2019 the Year of Clean Drinking Water and has spent the entirety of his two terms as governor fighting for efforts to address PFAS contamination, proposing numerous comprehensive plans to protect Wisconsinites from PFAS in drinking, ground, and surface water. The Evers Administration enacted the first statewide standards for PFAS in surface and drinking water and has proposed groundwater standards multiple times despite Republican obstruction. Gov. Evers also secured a historic $125 million investment of state funding in the 2023-25 Biennial Budget to assist homeowners and communities in addressing PFAS contamination, only for Republicans in the Legislature to block the DNR from accessing this funding for over two years.

Following multiple attempts to call on the Legislature to release this funding without delay, in April 2024, Gov. Evers vetoed Senate Bill 312, a Republican bill claiming to release the PFAS Trust Fund and address contamination but in fact did not release one dollar from the PFAS Trust Fund and also included harmful “poison pill” provisions that would have removed authority the DNR currently possesses to hold PFAS polluters accountable and require those polluters to clean up their own spills, despite the governor communicating to bill authors that the bill would be vetoed unless they removed this “poison pill” provision.

Months later, in his 2025-27 Executive Budget, Gov. Evers once again recommended a comprehensive plan to address PFAS contamination across surface, drinking, and groundwater. Among other provisions, the governor’s proposal recommended allowing the full balance of the PFAS Trust Fund to be utilized by the DNR, with special attention made to protect innocent landowners, as well as the adoption of major policies in the CLEAR Act, including exempting DNR rulemaking relating to setting enforceable PFAS standards from the REINS Act. Unfortunately, Republican lawmakers removed all of the governor’s proposals to address PFAS contamination from the final budget.

Despite these obstructions, the Evers Administration has continuously sought bipartisan compromise to release funding from the PFAS Trust Fund as well as protect truly innocent landowners. After months of negotiations and over two years of urging Republicans to release already-approved funding secured in the 2023-25 Biennial Budget, the bipartisan bills signed by the governor—Assembly Bill 130, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 200, and Assembly Bill 131, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 201—together facilitate the release of the $125 million in stalled PFAS investments that had sat unspent in Madison. The historic investment of the PFAS Trust Fund into Wisconsin’s communities is a critical step toward ensuring that Wisconsinites have access to safer water and reduced exposure to PFAS through the environment.

The DNR has been diligently working to implement the laws and new grant programs to help ensure safe, clean drinking water statewide. The first of these programs is set to launch in October and will focus on PFAS sampling of private wells, wells at schools and childcare facilities, and biosolids. Communities that need additional time to develop sampling plans and submit an application for grant funding will be able to apply in additional grant cycles. More information or additional updates on grant opportunities is available on the DNR’s website.

Gov. Evers also recently celebrated the state budget committee’s release of $10 million from the state’s PFAS Trust Fund to help provide safe, clean drinking water to families and communities impacted by contamination from Tyco Fire Products LP’s Fire Technology Center. The release of the funds comes as, last month, Gov. Evers and DNR formally requested the Wisconsin State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance release the approximately $10 million payment that Tyco made as part of the June 2026 settlement agreement that resolved State of Wisconsin v. Tyco Fire Products LP, which marked one of the first efforts to hold polluters accountable for PFAS contamination caused in Marinette. After pressure from Gov. Evers, lawmakers finally acted on the request. Now that the funding has been released to the Evers Administration, it will be used to provide clean, safe drinking water to those who have had their water polluted by PFAS contamination in the area, as well as testing and replacing contaminated wells and installing treatment systems.

In addition to these efforts, in March, Gov. Evers also approved new changes to bring the state’s current drinking water standards in line with federal limits for PFAS, reducing the state’s threshold for PFOA and PFAS contamination in drinking water from 70 parts per trillion (ppt) to a new enforceable standard of 4.0 ppt—an effort that will significantly improve drinking water quality for Wisconsinites. However, the Trump Administration has recently tried to roll back some of these standards, making statewide action to protect Wisconsinites from PFAS even more significant.