Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Lawmakers hear plea for short‑term funds to investigate PFAS at Lake Superior College training center
Summary
Lake Superior College and Minnesota State officials told a Senate committee that preliminary investigations show PFAS contamination at the college’s Emergency Response Training Center near the St. Louis River and asked for $500,000 to pay for additional site testing and near‑term mitigation planning.
Senators heard testimony that Lake Superior College in Duluth faces multi‑year, multi‑million‑dollar environmental work after decades of training exercises that used firefighting foam containing PFAS.
College president Dr. Patricia Rogers and Brian Swanson, associate vice chancellor for facilities at Minnesota State, told the Senate Higher Education Committee that the college’s 100‑acre Emergency Response Training Center (ERTC) — including a heavily contaminated 7‑acre burn pit — was used for aircraft rescue and firefighting training from the 1990s through 2014 and that aqueous film‑forming foam (AFFF) containing per‑ and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contributed to soil and water contamination.
“The ERTC was commissioned in 1994,” Dr. Patricia Rogers said. “Between 2,000 to 3,000, sometimes even more than that,…
Already have an account? Log in
Subscribe to keep reading
Unlock the rest of this article — and every article on Citizen Portal.
- Unlimited articles
- AI-powered breakdowns of topics, speakers, decisions, and budgets
- Instant alerts when your location has a new meeting
- Follow topics and more locations
- 1,000 AI Insights / month, plus AI Chat
