Brookings admits new water treatment plant can't remove all the forever chemicals

The State Senators and Representatives of Brookings County, South Dakota and the Mayor of Brookings are all Earth hating Republicans.

In 2017 a Minnesota-based company with an operation in Brookings hoped to drive attention from its manufactured forever chemicals that cause cancers and spontaneous abortions, a $5 billion lawsuit and a name change. 3M knew how bad the contamination risk was since at least the 1950s but waited until 1978 before it warned its own employees including my own sister who worked at the Brookings facility from 1974 until her death in 1995. The firm didn't notify the US Environmental Protection Agency either until 1998 when a company toxicologist noted those substances in fish, birds and other wildlife but continues manufacturing the poisonous chemicals yet today. 

In 2024 nine of eleven sites below Watertown tested positive for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances including a hot spot in Falls Park in Sioux Falls but researchers found thirty two samples with nine types of PFAS compounds.

In October, 2025 the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit against 3M in federal court, saying that the company polluted its lakes, drinking water and wildlife with the toxic chemicals.

Now, after spending some $70 million granted by federal and state governments on a water treatment plant Brookings officials have admitted the system is failing to remove all the PFAS created mostly by 3M. Contaminated stormwater often overwhelms the collection pond on Solventum (3M) property then spreads the contaminants into aquifer recharges, to soils under George S. Mickelson Middle School and to the already polluted Big Sioux River. 

South Dakota State University in Brookings has begun using a liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometer to test surface water and groundwater that traverses within the food chain according to assistant professor and coordinator of the Campus Core Mass Spectrometry Facility M. Nurul Islam. Professor Islam could be arrested and deported if the ICE raid scheduled for Brookings targets him.

The Biden administration set limits on the chemicals as testing found them in nearly half of Americans’ drinking water but the Trump Organization is weakening those life safety standards. Now, with drought taking hold in eastern South Dakota we should be sending thoughts and prayers in advance for the wretched masses that have poisoned their own wells and tapped into big gubmint to water glyphosate-treated lawns while they complain about the protections for Waters of the United States or WOTUS.

Yes, the grassland fire danger index will be in the very high and extreme categories again Wednesday for much of the failed red state.