MANSFIELD — Mansfield City Council, which met for three hours last week, has scheduled a special session Tuesday to consider one piece of legislation.
Council is scheduled to meet at 5:30 p.m. at the Municipal Building.
The only agenda item is a bill authorizing Public Works Director Dave Remy to sign documents “that must be executed in order to participate in relevant two partial settlements of the pending PFAS litigation as it relates to DuPont and 3M.”
It’s not known what those settlements entail. An email Monday afternoon from Council Clerk Amy Yockey said the special meeting was called by council members Phil Scott, Cheryl Meier and Kimberly Moton.
The City of Mansfield earlier this year signed onto a federal class-action lawsuit against companies that allegedly contaminated the soil and water at Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport.
Council, during a 20-minute executive session in September, heard an update from attorneys representing the city and other communities in a lawsuit against more than two dozen companies, including Dupont.
The city filed a lawsuit in Richland County Common Pleas Court in February, but the case has been joined with other plaintiffs in federal court, according to city Law Director John Spon.
At that time, Spon said additional testing was scheduled for the airport area.
The complaint alleges products manufactured by the companies contained PFAS, including perfluorooctanoic acid (“PFOA”) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (“PFOS”).
These “forever chemicals” were discovered in the groundwater, surface water and soil at the former Ohio Air National Guard’s 179th Airlift Wing, based at the Mansfield airport.
When the city filed suit locally in January, it alleged 30 defendant companies “designed, manufactured, marketed, distributed and/or sold” products containing these chemicals dating back to the 1960s through today.
The complaint alleges these chemicals are found in products such as Teflon, Scotchguard, waterproofing compounds, stainproofing compounds, paper and cloth coatings, waxes and aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF).
“AFFF is a firefighting agent used to control and extinguish Class B fuel fires and is used at sites such as military bases, airports, petroleum refineries and fire-training centers,” according to the locally filed complaint.
“As a result of the use of (defendants’ products) for their intended purpose, PFAS have been detected in plaintiff’s property,” the complaint
