Nearly a year after a city well was shut down due to PFAS contamination, Stillwater residents will soon see the first official notice from the government of the problem — a delay that’s drawn criticism from former Gov. Arne Carlson.

In a letter to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), Carlson called it “stunning” that people weren’t informed sooner.

“This goes well beyond careless management or an administrative snafu. People’s lives were placed in danger by the deliberate inaction of their own government,” he wrote in a March 20 email to Health Commissioner Brooke Cunningham.

Carlson asked why the public wasn’t informed as soon as the first well was found to have contaminants, and why there was a delay in closing the well after the first finding of contamination.

In a reply, Assistant Commissioner Myra Kunas said it’s been the agency’s practice to notify local officials whenever elevated levels of PFAS are detected in a drinking water system and to recommend that they share that information with their residents. It’s done this way for now because there are not yet any actionable federal or state standards for the allowable amount of PFAS in drinking water, Kunas wrote.

“MDH currently has no regulatory authority to act to shut down a water system with any amount of PFAS detected,” she wrote.

In Stillwater, a routine test of city well #6 on Nov. 22, 2022, found high levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, one of the many types of chemicals in the family of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Further tests on March 7, April 27, and August 16 of 2023 confirmed levels of PFOS in the well at or near 15 nanograms per liter, the safety threshold.

The Minnesota Department of Health on Oct. 31 sent a letter to the Stillwater City Council, notifying them that it was issuing a health risk advisory for PFAS at well #6. The letter included two recommendations, the first being to notify the public.

“It is important that people consuming the water be informed about any potential health risks and actions they can take to reduce exposure to PFAS from their drinking water, as well as any actions the water system is taking,” the letter stated.

The letter also recommended that the city “plan for and take action” to reduce PFAS in the drinking water supply.

The city didn’t go public immediately. Instead, it hired St. Paul engineering consultant TKDA on a $25,000 contract to craft a PFAS communications plan.

The closure of the well was not widely shared until the consultant’s communications plan was placed on an agenda for a March 6 workshop meeting and the contaminated well was reported by the Star Tribune on March 4.

Stillwater Mayor Ted Kozlowski on Tuesday didn’t respond to text or email messages, but City Administrator Joe Kohlmann said the city shut down well #6 on April 17, 2023, after a second test revealed problems. The state Health Department recommends testing over nearly a year to confirm the PFAS numbers and to avoid a false positive, Kohlmann said.

As for the city’s delay in notifying the public: Kohlmann said it takes time to print copies of the city newsletter and mail them out, which is how city residents will see the first official notice of PFAS contamination in the April 1 newsletter. Kohlmann also said Stillwater’s PFAS news has been in the media. The city has also created a PFAS information page on its website, he said.

In a post on Facebook earlier this month, Kozlowski spoke directly to city residents about the PFAS issue, but made several misleading statements.

Kozlowski said the state Health Department has directed actions to shut down wells in some communities like Woodbury due to PFAS levels. That’s not true. Woodbury closed wells on its own authority, city officials there confirmed.

Kozlowski also said MDH hasn’t recommended the closure of Stillwater’s well. The agency, in fact, can’t order the closure due to PFAS levels because it lacks the legal authority to do so. The agency in its Oct. 31 letter did recommend that the city “take action to reduce exposure to PFAS” in the city’s drinking water.

It’s long been known that the EPA will soon lower safety thresholds for PFAS, and based on the new numbers, a second Stillwater well could get flagged. Well #10 has tested at 4.2 to 4.7 nanograms per liter for PFOS, which is above the new threshold, state health officials said.

More information, including PFAS testing results for community water systems, is available on the Minnesota Department of Health’s PFAS dashboard.