Jeremiah King

Continuing their quest for more revenue, Fredonia officials brought in a Rochester lawyer Wednesday who said he could get the village a cut of a settlement over harmful chemicals in water.

Jeremiah King of the King Law Firm spoke at a Fredonia Board of Trustees workshop. King explained he works on litigation over so-called PFAS in water, and currently represents about 40 municipalities between Buffalo and Syracuse.

In the case King discussed Wednesday, “A group of lawyers and towns got together years ago and decided to sue the people who make firefighting foam,” he said. King stated that DuPont sold firefighting foam that it knew was harmful to lab animals in tests, for more than 50 years.

Billion-dollar settlements were reached with such companies as DuPont and 3M, King continued. “What that did is took a pool of money about $14 billion-plus and put it out there for municipalities to go after a piece of that pie. Basically, we’re going around and working with municipalities to try and get a piece of that settlement. One of our clients near you is Dunkirk. … We just got a big first payment for them a few weeks ago. The payments come in a staggered schedule.

“I’ve worked with folks that have wells… that have reservoirs, I’ve really worked with people with all different water sources,” the lawyer went on. “Some of the things that we found through doing this 40 times over in New York is that a number of people are going to miss the opportunity. Part of the reason they’re going to miss the opportunity is — I’m not necessarily trying to blame anybody, the EPA or anybody like that, but there was a big kind of protocol that went out over the last few years, it was called UCMR5, it was a testing that was going to be required of municipalities that are creating water and to do testing so that there could be better data for EPA to see problems. The EPA was looking for folks to be under what’s called four parts per trillion as kind of the benchmark that would be a safe level of PFAS to be in people’s water.”

King droned on some more about testing, noting that it would show the village’s eligibility for settlement funds — and King Law Firm could handle it, free of charge. “We would be kind of guidance and coach on the testing side of things, using the lab we’ve had good success with.”

Test data would be compared with volumes of water used over the last 10 years. “We’re able to go after more money the higher the water volumes have been,” King said, explaining that the highest volume used in the decade would be put in court filings in order to get more money.

King said water in Western New York is generally safe from PFAS by EPA standards, with PFAS usually testing at around 1 to 2 parts per trillion. He called that “the best of both worlds” because it’s low enough to be safe but high enough to be eligible for settlement money.

Fredonia officials seemed amenable to joining King’s court action. “I guess my thought would be, if it doesn’t cost anything, why would we not,” said Trustee Jon Espersen.

Trustee Paul Wandel asked about PFAS in Lake Erie water. The village is in the midst of a drawn-out dispute over whether to buy water from Dunkirk or keep its own system, which is fed by ground water.

King said he didn’t know Dunkirk’s levels off the top of his head — but felt sure it was not much different from the range of 1 to 2 parts per trillion seen in other Western New York municipalities.

King said he will get a contract proposal to Village Treasurer Erlyssa LeBeau. A resolution to join the court action could be on the agenda for Monday’s trustees meeting.