Just like the tap water, money still not flowing

For those living on French Island, help can’t come soon enough. It is too bad the state doesn’t share that urgency. For more than two years, people living on French Island have been relying on bottled water because of PFAS contamination in their wells. State lawmakers spent much of that time turning a blind eye to the problem, before finally allocating money to clean up the contamination. $125 million was included in the state budget to address PFAS contamination. But months later, not a single penny of that money has been spent, and there are still no plans for how it should be spent. While the money was allocated by state lawmakers to test and treat for PFAS, they simply put it in a trust fund while they make a determination how it should best be spent. They still have not issued their recommendations to the DNR, so we’re no closer to fixing the problem. And it is not clear when that work will be done and the money, along with the tap water, can start flowing. It’s like giving someone a Christmas present, but telling them they can’t open it. Simply allocating the money does nothing. Spending the money is the way to make progress, but unlike those on French Island, so far that doesn’t seem something our lawmakers consider to be all that urgent.