While door-knocking in Hastings this summer, clean drinking water was high on Tom Dippel’s list of talking points with community members.
“The water issue is a very local issue here,” explained Dippel, a Republican state Senate candidate who resides in Cottage Grove and currently serves in the Minnesota House.
Five of Hasting’s six municipal wells exceed federal safe drinking water limits for PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). These are synthetic, hard-to-break-down chemicals that can lead to cancer, infertility and other major health issues in humans and animals. The chemicals are used in thousands of household items like nonstick cookware, water-resistant fabrics and cleaning products, including many manufactured by Maplewood-based 3M.
The company has been embroiled in lawsuits for nearly 20 years after it was found to have knowingly contaminated local waterways with PFAS. Now the water pollution issue is emerging as a campaign issue in east metro communities affected by it, including District 41, where it has become a prominent part of the campaigns of both Dippel and his Democratic opponent Sen. Judy Seeberger, DFL-Afton.
In 2010, the state of Minnesota filed a lawsuit against 3M, and in 2018, the company settled for $850 million, with an additional $40 million for short-term solutions like buying communities bottled water.
This money was allocated to cities whose water has been affected by PFAS pollution, including Cottage Grove, Oakdale and Woodbury. Hastings was left out of the settlement until 2024, when a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency study linked PFAS in one of Hastings’ wells to 3M’s Cottage Grove site. The city received $14.5 million from the 3M settlement after that connection was discovered.
Hastings is using that money to build a new water treatment plant capable of filtering PFAS, with plans to build two more in the coming years. The $14.5 million covers only a fraction of the nearly $70 million price tag the three facilities are expected to cost.
The rest will be paid for by state and federal funds, grants and increases to the city’s water rates. Hastings residents have had their water rates increase three times since January 2025, with more rate hikes expected over the next three years.
“We’re really seeing taxpayers now questioning: Well, why should we have to pay, when it was these business entities that knowingly dumped [PFAS] into our community?” said Avonna Starck, the state director of Clean Water Action, a nonpartisan water advocacy organization. “So it is a huge issue in this election.”
How each candidate addresses this issue could decide the outcome of this hotly contested Senate seat. In 2022, Seeberger beat Dippel (who’s running again for the same seat) by a tiny margin: just 321 votes.
Four years later, east metro voters are likely even more aware of the PFAS problem, especially as their water bills rise because of it.
“When [Minnesota] filed the lawsuit in 2010, nobody had even heard of PFAS,” said Lori Swanson, former Minnesota attorney general. She represented the state during the eight-year legal battle against 3M.
“But over the last 16 years, people are much more aware and sensitive about the kind of products they buy, you know, from cookware and Gore-Tex jackets and everything else,” Swanson said.
Both candidates have taken swings at addressing the east metro’s drinking water problem.
Seeberger was a chief author of the 2023 Amara’s Law, a groundbreaking piece of Minnesota legislation that banned the use of PFAS in some products and required companies to report products they make that contain PFAS to a public database. Seeberger also advocated that money be allocated to Hastings from the 2026 bonding bill. Hastings received $17.4 million from that bill.
“That was partly to cover the cost of the [PFAS mitigation plant],” Seeberger said.
Dippel also advocated for bonding bill funding, and authored three bills that sought 3M trust fund money and capital investment money to help Hastings pay for their water treatment facilities. All three bills died in committee. Both politicians have highlighted PFAS as a major issue on their campaign websites.
But when it comes to how the 2018 settlement money is spent, both politicians’ influence is limited. That’s because those decisions are made by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Department of Natural Resources.
“The idea [with the settlement money] was that the state would listen to local units of government and their ideas, but then the state would have the final responsibility to use their discretion to determine exactly what projects to implement or not,” Swanson said.
As of June 2026, $604 million of the original $890 million in settlement money has been allocated. The roughly $300 million left could be used up by late 2027 or early 2028, according to a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesperson – although that estimate could easily change, the agency emphasized.
So far, the money has been allocated to water infrastructure updates, park improvement and stream restoration projects throughout the east metro. If it runs out before all the necessary PFAS mitigation projects are made, 3M is required to cover that cost.
“So essentially, [3M] would be an open checkbook, if you will, where they have to continue to fix the problems if this wasn’t enough,” Swanson said.
Seeberger anticipates the money running out before the whole east metro can fix its PFAS water pollution problems. “Lake Elmo, Afton and Cottage Grove are running out of money to take care of the problem,” Seeberger said.
And the legal drama has not ended: The city of Hastings filed its own lawsuit against 3M in August 2026. If that lawsuit follows the same timeline as the state’s did – a process that took eight years from filing to settlement – the issue is likely to follow whoever wins the Senate seat through the entirety of their term.
“This has a very long tail and a long legacy,” Swanson said.
Matthew Blake contributed to the reporting of this article.
Claire Carlson is a Report for America corps member, covering drinking water for MinnPost and the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. Report for America places talented journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and regions.
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