The City of Hastings has sued 3M, alleging that decades of smokestack emissions from the company's Cottage Grove plant contaminated five of the city's six public drinking water wells with PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals now forcing a $70.3 million overhaul of the city's water system. Hastings is asking the courts to make 3M pay for treatment plants, monitoring, testing and other costs tied to the contamination.
According to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, court documents allege that winds carried PFAS particles from the Cottage Grove facility into Hastings, where the chemicals leached into groundwater and municipal wells. The lawsuit states that 3M's Cottage Grove plant released PFAS through smokestack emissions, and court filings cited by CBS News allege the company manufactured perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, at that plant from the 1940s through 2002, with emissions depositing onto surrounding soil and leaching into downwind aquifers. Cottage Grove sits directly upwind of Hastings across the Mississippi River, per that report.
Hastings opted out of 3M's national public water systems settlement, according to the station's report, choosing instead to pursue its own case for full damages rather than accept a standard pro-rata share. 3M finalized a $10.3 billion nationwide settlement in 2024 covering more than 11,000 public water systems across the country, and the company has said it remains willing to engage with Hastings about legitimate concerns, per the same account.
A $70 Million Overhaul With Only a Fraction Covered
The financial stakes behind the lawsuit are steep. As of April 2026, the City of Hastings had updated its total project estimate to design and construct three decentralized water treatment plants to $70.3 million, and the city says it has secured $23.3 million in outside grants and settlement funds so far. That leaves more than $47 million still unaccounted for, a gap the city's legal strategy aims to close by shifting the remaining burden from ratepayers back onto 3M.
Some of that outside money has already arrived. In October 2024, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency tied a 3M-manufactured chemical to a Hastings municipal well, a finding that opened the door to roughly $14.5 million from Minnesota's 2018 settlement with 3M, according to MPR News. That 2018 settlement itself totaled $850 million, reached after the State of Minnesota sued 3M over contamination affecting drinking water and natural resources across 150 square miles of the Twin Cities east metro, per the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. State settlement funds, however, cover less than a quarter of what Hastings needs for its full clean-water overhaul.
Federal Standards Set the Deadline
The urgency traces back to Washington. On April 10, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized the first national primary drinking water regulation for PFAS, setting legally enforceable limits of 4.0 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS. Five of Hastings' six active public drinking wells exceed those federal limits, and the city must build new treatment plants to meet the standards. In May 2026, the EPA proposed rule revisions that would uphold the 4.0 parts per trillion limit while giving public water systems the option to request a compliance deadline extension from 2029 to 2031, offering cities like Hastings additional time to finance and construct the infrastructure.
Hastings is far from alone in confronting this problem. Testing data analyzed by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy in 2024 found that 22 public water systems across Minnesota, including Hastings, had PFAS concentrations exceeding the EPA's new standards, underscoring how widespread the remediation burden has become across the state.
Rising Bills for Local Ratepayers
Absent a courtroom win or additional outside funding, the cost falls on residents. To pay for the first phase of construction, Hastings raised municipal water rates by 20% in 2025 and scheduled sequential 10% increases every six months through early 2027, according to the Hastings Journal. City projections have warned that without significant outside funding or legal recovery, local water rates could double or triple.
3M has pointed to its prior settlements as evidence of its response to the contamination, citing both the $850 million Minnesota agreement and the $10.3 billion national water systems settlement. The company has said it met its goal of discontinuing manufacture of all PFAS globally by the end of 2025, after previously announcing in 2000 that it would exit manufacture of certain long-chain PFAS compounds. Unsealed depositions made public in late 2024 showed 3M scientists were aware as early as 1975 that PFAS compounds were present in general human blood samples, and that 1979 internal toxicity studies resulted in animal fatalities, according to FOX 9.
A Regional Pattern of Legal and Legislative Fights
Hastings' lawsuit is the latest chapter in a broader regional fight over 3M's PFAS legacy. Hoodline previously reported on a legislative clash between state lawmakers Tom Dippel and Judy Seeberger over whether to reallocate 3M settlement funds or use state bonding to help Hastings pay for its treatment plants. Nearby, Newport has connected to Cottage Grove's water system for PFAS-filtered water funded through the 3M settlement, according to Hoodline's coverage of Cottage Grove's ambulance subsidy changes, illustrating how settlement dollars have flowed unevenly to communities across the east metro.
