Florida is booming, but a toxic financial crisis is brewing right beneath our feet. For decades, aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) used at airports, military bases, and fire training centers has been quietly contaminating our public drinking water sources with PFAS—the notorious synthetic "forever chemicals."
Now, federal and state regulators are cracking down. The cost for public water supply entities (PWSs) to upfit and modernize water treatment facilities to meet these strict new compliance standards is astronomical. If local leaders remain on the sidelines, that massive capital burden will bypass the corporate polluters and fall directly onto the backs of Florida taxpayers.
Fortunately, a roadmap for financial recovery already exists. PWSs across the country have filed lawsuits against the manufacturers and distributors of AFFF products, seeking to recover the exact costs associated with these mandatory water treatment facility upgrades. The defendants in these multi-district litigation (MDL) cases include corporate giants like 3M, DuPont, Chemours, and Tyco, who manufactured and distributed these chemicals despite knowing the devastating health consequences and the high likelihood of groundwater contamination.
But the clock is ticking. For Phase 2 public water systems—those that detected PFAS after June 2023—the deadlines to file claims and access billions in pending class-action settlement funds are just weeks away. We are currently at the end of June 2026; the window effectively closes next month.
Florida’s high-volume systems are particularly vulnerable. The dense groundwater networks supplying hundreds of thousands of residents in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties are highly susceptible to AFFF migration from adjacent aviation hubs and seaports. Massive regional systems across the state face similar exposures.
The financial scale of this crisis cannot be understated. Paul Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik, co-lead class counsel in the MDL, recently noted that the historic multibillion-dollar settlements achieved so far are "just scratching the surface."
"PFAS cases are here for a long time," Napoli stated. "While the water providers have been resolved, there are still airports, water treatment facilities, and other municipal properties... The U.S. government has significant liability for the 700 military sites it's contaminated."
Active litigation is the only way to ensure full recovery. Proper legal representation "includes filing and litigating claims on behalf of the City in the MDL and pursuing recovery from all defendants." Furthermore, it involves the active investigation and potential litigation against other local PFAS polluters—such as chemical plants and landfills—who may have also contributed to the localized contamination.
The City of Miramar has already set the standard for aggressive action. Miramar is actively pursuing claims against fifteen remaining AFFF defendants and ensuring they get their rightful share of the existing settlement funds. They are not waiting for the state to save them, and they are refusing to pass the cleanup costs to their residents.
Elected officials and city administrators can no longer afford to kick this can down the road. Protecting Florida's water supply and safeguarding municipal budgets requires immediate, decisive action. It is time to wake up, integrate the engineering data, call the attorneys, and ensure that the corporations responsible for this crisis are the ones paying to clean it up.
