Town of Campbell is looking at drilling to solve PFAS problem
CAMPBELL, Wis. (WLAX/WEUX) – The town of Campbell is working on a new drilling project that officials hope will eliminate PFAS from the town’s taps. First News at Nine’s Dashal Mentzel has more on how this project came to be, and what will be done.
The town of Campbell may be close to solving a problem that has affected the town for years. The town received $500,000 in funding from La Crosse County for a drilling project that looks to remove PFAS from the town’s water system. Town Supervisor Lee Donahue says the PFAS is anywhere from ground level to 85 feet below, “That will be very helpful for us and for neighboring communities. But it’s also important to determine what the status is of the rock layer between the upper contaminated aquifer and the lower non-contaminated aquifer.”
The town is also receiving help from UW Madison Geoscience Professor, Michael Cardiff, and his research team, “We’re going to collect core from the well. We’re going to get samples of rock and look at those samples to try to analyze them, see what their porosity, their permeability is, which is basically how fast water can flow through them.”
Donahue wants to use a municipal system that goes to the lower aquifer. She says this project is about making sure that the lower aquifer is sustainable for those future plans, “What we’re really trying to figure out is how is the PFAS moving and, and is this protective layer between the aquifers? Is it really going to provide a safety element to prevent that contamination from leaking to the lower aquifer?”
Donahue adds that while the water in the lower aquifer isn’t fit for consumption without filtration, it will be much easier to filter water from there, “There are still some compounds in this water that would need to be filtered out, but it’s much less expensive to filter out the iron, the manganese, and the radium than it is to filter PFAS.”
The research and drill teams will be around for at least the next week working on the project. In Campbell, Dashal Mentzel First News at Nine.
Donahue hopes that if this project successfully finds no PFAS in the lower aquifer, the town will be able to begin its municipal water system in the next 3 to 6 months.
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