Stella board seeks multi-town stakeholder committee as PFAS plume grows

The town of Stella has been found to have some of the highest concentrations of PFAS in the state. PFAS includes a number of compounds used in everything from non-stick pan coating to firefighting foam. There has been concern by residents, the Stella town board, and the surrounding areas about how these compounds have accumulated in the water and soil.

One of those surrounding areas encompasses the Moen Lake Chain, east of Rhinelander. Recently, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) sent out a press release with consumption advisories of both fish and deer harvested from the area known to be high in PFAS.

This press release prompted a letter to the DNR’s James Yach from the Moen Lake Chain Association. The letter stated the association felt communication between their organization and the department had always seemed to be good, but they were caught off guard by the press release as well as subsequent emails and phone calls from citizens, businesses and the organizer of an annual musky tournament on the chain.

“Now they tell me I can’t fish in my lake anymore,” said Tom LaDue, who owns a home on Snowden Lake, commenting on the press release. 

Town chairman William Casey Crump was unable to attend the board meeting, as he was out on a fire department call. Town supervisor Rich Hirman asked LaDue what Crump had done to set up the committee that would essentially be the go-between between the town and the DNR. LaDue said he had yet to hear anything.

“We’re kind of waiting on this, because we’ve got some meetings coming up and we need you, as a committee, to represent the town,” Hirman said. “I don’t even know how many people are going to be on the committee. So we need to tune Casey [Crump] up and tell him to get ahold of his people.”

With a meeting with the DNR set for Oct. 1, there was some concern that the committee had not been formed yet. This meeting, Hirman said, was said to be concerned with soil and water only, but now there were questions regarding consumption of wildlife in the area that needed to be answered as well.

Water sampling is now being opened up to a wider band of residents, which would include the towns of Pine Lake and Pelican. Residents of Pine Lake attended the meeting to ask about this sampling.

“Every six months they (DNR) send out so many letters to people, and then they get their water tested,” said town clerk Stacy Schickert. “Anything, I think, on the Moen Chain.” 

Town supervisor Jerome Pokorny said the testing has started in a one-mile radius, then moving to two miles, then five miles. Now, he said, the testing was expanding out to get a better understanding of how far out PFAS concentrations were an issue and what that might mean for residents. When it came to testing and test results, there were questions as well.

“I haven’t seen any correspondence,” Hirman said. “We have two test wells here. I haven’t seen any test results from either one of them. We never even see any results, nothing saying, oh, you guys are doing good or, oh, you guys are getting higher. Nothing. Ever.”

“The only thing that we got was that we have PFAS in the ground, in our soil,” Pokorny said. “What they’re doing right now is trying to get this into a super fund, so it doesn’t have to keep coming out of the DNR’s pocket. They keep paying and paying and sooner or later the money is going to run out.”

Need for an overarching committee

The committee, as well as members of the public in attendance, turned to the matter of who should make up the PFAS committee. 

“This isn’t just a town of Stella problem anymore” Schickert said. “It’s like an Oneida County problem, but it’s probably a state of Wisconsin problem.” 

She said chairs in other towns should be getting involved, too. 

With the Moen Lake Chain Association calling for the DNR to hold a meeting at the Stella Town Hall, the feeling was that the association should appoint representation to the PFAS committee as well. 

Nearby affected towns such as Pelican and Pine Lake were also mentioned as potential other stakeholders who should be invited to come to the table to bring a stronger voice to the DNR that could then demand answers to the questions affected citizens had regarding PFAS.

Hirman agreed that all of the affected towns as well as the lake association should get together to have a meeting rather than each town or entity attempting to tackle the issue alone. With testing expanding, it is likely the issue will also expand. The board felt there was a disconnect between them and other towns, but with all of them coming together to form a committee, it may be bring a united front to show the importance of the PFAS issue. Hirman offered up the Stella town hall as a place for the potential committee to meet, saying the full board did not need to be there, but the committee would be free to use the facility at any time that did not conflict with any other event. 

“They leave you hanging,” Hirman said in response to a question whether there might be a large number of people who would still want answers from the DNR. “When we got our first meeting, it was all about — what can we do to fix your water?” From there, pallets of water were brought in. Culligan was brought in for residents that used that service, he said. Then wells were put in. Since the advent of those wells, Hirman said, the town had not heard anything further. “All of a sudden, a radius of five miles comes up. Don’t eat the fish. Don’t eat the deer. We haven’t heard anything forever. We have not had a DNR representative come here to give us an update.” 

Pokorny asked LaDue if he would talk to Crump about putting together a committee of the towns and other stakeholders in the area. That committee, he said, could not be put together by the Oct. 1 meeting, but the committee could then work to set a meeting with the entities to whom they wished to pose questions about PFAS. As the issue expands into other townships, Schickert said, that could add even more voices to the committee. 

“We’re here to help facilitate between the DNR and stuff in any way we can,” Schickert said. “But the people who are affected, as far as residents, are going to be the people who make the most impact.”

Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].