Following from our September 25 post, Steve Elbow at the Cap Times wrote this article after talking with Steve Martin at the DNR about the PFAS that traveled from MGE to Lake Monona during and after the July 19 transformer fire at the site.
Some intriguing statements in the article…
“Martin said that there’s evidence that some PFAS detected in outflows to the lake may not have come from the MG&E site. The chemical make-up of the water near the site, he said, doesn’t match that of the water spilling into the lake. He said that “suggests to us, at least at this preliminary point in time, that there might be other sources of PFAS entering the sewer system.””
This is interesting and troubling. If there are other sources of PFAS entering the storm drain system into Lake Monona, what are they? Is DNR looking into it? We hope so. They would presumably be ongoing sources of PFAS in downtown Madison that drain via storm sewers into the lake–unlike the MGE source, which was significant but temporary (large quantities of firefighting foam used on one day).
If there are in fact ongoing sources of PFAS entering storm sewer systems downtown discharging into Lake Monona, it is even more imperative that–as we argued in our September 25 post– city, county, and state agencies require thorough PFAS testing of lake water, sediments, and fish as soon as possible to protect anglers, especially subsistence anglers.
