 Okay, good morning. I am Attorney General TJ Donovan. I am joined today by Secretary of Agency Natural Resources Julie Moore. Madam Secretary, thank you for being here with us. Also Deputy Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources Peter Walk. Peter, thanks for being with us. My Chief of my Environmental Division Rob McDougal is here with us as well as Assistant Attorney General Laura Murphy is here as well. We are here to announce that the state of Vermont has filed lawsuits against several multinational chemical companies for the manufacturing and contamination of Vermont's environment by putting harmful and dangerous PFAS chemicals into Vermont's environment, into our air, into our soil, into our water, and into Vermont's bodies. The health risks associated with these dangerous chemicals are the following, altered growth, impacts to learning and behavior of infants and older children, lowering a woman's chance of getting pregnant, interference with the body's natural hormones, increased cholesterol levels, impacts to the immune system, increased risk of testicular and kidney cancers, colitis, thyroid disease, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. We take these actions by following these lawsuits to protect Vermont's health and our environment by holding these multinational chemical companies responsible for the harm they have caused our state. I want to be clear, we file these lawsuits in Chittenden County, but these chemicals are at every part of the state of Vermont, and the contamination is going to be and has been found everywhere. There are two cases that have been filed. One specifically focuses on AFF, which is the firefighting foam, and the other is on the PFAS chemicals. PFAS is essentially the umbrella PFOA that we've heard about, most notably in Bennington County, is a PFAS chemical. The companies that we have sued are 3M, who was the original manufacturer of PFAS, and DuPont, as well as five more DuPont-related companies. They are both named in our lawsuits. The other companies are ChemGuard, TycoFire Products, Buckeye Fire Equipment, Kidd Fenwall, and National Foam are named defendants in the AFF cases only. These lawsuits allege that despite knowing for decades that these chemicals were dangerous and harmful, the companies never told us. They never told Vermont or Vermonters or frankly some other companies. They knew they were harmful to people. They knew that they were harmful to our environment, and the defendant companies continued to manufacture, market and sell these chemicals and related products. They never provided public notice of the potential harm and the health risks from these chemicals. This is why we sue. The public has only recently found out about the dangers of these chemicals and the widespread contamination. Vermont has acted swiftly after these discoveries to protect public and environmental health. The goal of these lawsuits are to hold the chemical and product manufacturers responsible for their conduct and the resulting harm to Vermont's drinking water and natural resources and Vermonters health. The state is seeking damages and other remedies to recover for the harm caused to Vermont's environment by the PFAS chemicals and costs to the state for the investigation and the response. Vermont has a proud tradition of being a steward of our land, of our air, of our water. We believe that clean drinking water is a basic human right, and the fact that these companies knew that these these chemicals were harmful and dangerous and never disclosed it, never told us. The state of Vermont takes that seriously. That's why we bring a lawsuit today in Chittenden County to hold these companies, these multinational chemical companies accountable for the harm for contaminating our environment and for the harm they have brought to Vermonters. With that, let me turn it over to Secretary Moore. Secretary Moore, I want to thank you and your agency for your great collaboration, not only with our office, but with all of state government, most notably those down in Bennington County where we can say without reservation that that was the county that best illustrates what these chemicals did to the residents of Bennington County. They contaminated drinking water. People couldn't drink their own water from their own wells because these chemicals. As you know, there's a class action lawsuit down there regarding the harm caused. But I want to thank Secretary Moore for your leadership and the great work that you and Deputy Secretary Walk did tact swiftly to bring about clean drinking water to the residents of Bennington County. We look forward to working with you to hold these these companies and these corporations accountable and to make Vermont whole. Secretary Moore. Good morning. Thank you, Attorney General Donovan. And on behalf of Governor Scott, I'm pleased to be here this morning in the continued collaboration with the Attorney General's office as we take next steps to address the impacts of PFAS contamination and prevent human exposure to these chemicals. Mont is and will continue to be a national leader. And I want to thank the governor and the Attorney General for their constant leadership and support in this important work. Since the discovery of PFAS contamination in Bennington in 2016, A&R has taken a proactive approach in looking for the presence of PFAS in the environment. The state has conducted a series of investigations and reviewed existing testing data to identify, characterize and address the risks to public health and environmental contamination as soon and as swiftly as possible. Steps taken to date include the sampling of over 40 public water supplies and hundreds of private wells. Targeted sampling of areas where the use of PFAS chemicals in industrial processes or firefighting activities is either known or suspected. The sampling of drinking water in 10 schools whose water supplies were determined to be at the highest risk of potential contamination. The sampling of soils statewide in partnership with the University of Vermont. The sampling of landfill leachate throughout the state and the sampling of wastewater influent effluent and sludge at six wastewater treatment facilities. From the sampling we have found PFAS above the 20 parts per trillion groundwater protection standard in public water systems in private wells in Bennington and Pownall and Clarendon and Shaftesbury and at a school in Warren. All affected users have been supplied clean drinking water either through treatment or from alternative sources. In addition, the majority of landfill tests showed PFAS above the 20 parts per trillion standards. Testing at wastewater treatment facilities showed the presence of PFAS in varying concentrations and influent effluent and sludge. Soil sampling has shown there are low levels of PFAS present in surface soils throughout Vermont. Fortunately, the concentrations have been well below the standard for direct contact, but work remains to determine the potential impacts on drinking water supplies. The governor recently signed a bill as 49 now act 21 that authorizes and are to continue this proactive approach to addressing the problem. We over the next year, we will be testing approximately 700 public water systems for PFAS. We are also in the process of adopting surface water standards for PFAS that will protect public health and aquatic organisms. And our has plans to continue testing at facilities and locations where PFAS use is known or suspected, such as industrial users and car washes. We have a plan in place for further sampling at wastewater treatment facilities and landfills. And we will also be doing soil sampling at locations where wastewater sludge and bio solids have been land applied. Given the widespread nature of the contamination, we expect to find concentrations of PFAS requiring additional response work. And this lawsuit will hold the manufacturers of these chemicals who continue to profit from their sale long after knowing the potential harm financially responsible for their financial impact to Vermont and Vermonters. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Moore. Let me turn it over now to Rob McDougal, the environmental chief of the for the attorney general's office as well as Laura Murphy, who have done tremendous work in filing and getting this complaint ready to talk a little bit more in detail about the specific causes of action that we allege against these chemical companies. Thank you. And I have a statement to read from the Bennington delegation. Senator Sears and Senator Campion couldn't be here today to be a part of the press conference, but we reached out to them and they wanted me to read their statement. It's also been our press release that we issue shortly. Their statement reads on behalf of the delegation, we applaud the filing of these lawsuits by the state. The creators of these chemicals have caused tremendous destruction to the environment worldwide. It must be held accountable for what they have done. PFAS chemicals persist indefinitely in the environment. They are known toxicants and associated with multiple types of cancers. The residents of Bennington County have experienced firsthand the devastating impacts of such contamination. We've watched what happens when PFOA harms Vermonters health and property, and we would not wish any community to experience what our community has experienced. This next phase which the Attorney General has started gives us hope that those who have created this nightmare will be made to be answerable. We thank the governor, the Attorney General, the Agency of Natural Resources and all of their teams for taking this step to protect Vermont's people and the environment. I would echo the Attorney General and Secretary Moore's comments. We really have a great partnership with the agency and I thank the agency for working with us. Their legal team, their program staff have been with us on this matter and worked very successfully with us on the Bennington matter. Within our office, our Environmental Protection Division, our support staff and Laura Murphy, our AEG. Laura's been here for three years in our office and has worked on PFOA related issues just about every single day that she's been with us. So I just want to thank them as well. As far as causes of action in the complaint, there's nine causes of action in each. We have a natural resource damages cause of action, a harm to groundwater, defective product, duty to warn, negligence, public nuisance, private nuisance, trespass and also a claim relating to the Voidable Transactions Act, which is specific to Dupont and some of the corporate maneuvering they did to create these offshoot companies that we've named as defendants. We're also seeking punitive damages. Through this action, we're seeking costs for cleaning up and restoring our natural resources. We're seeking costs for treating contaminated water. We're seeking costs for testing and monitoring. And we're seeking damages for the loss of the value that the defendants cost to Vermont's natural resources. This case is really about holding these chemical companies accountable and also for making Vermont whole by restoring and protecting cleaning up its environment. Lord, do you have anything to add? No, so two questions? Yeah, if there's questions out, we're happy to take them at this time. I think New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, New York. Yeah, so there's a handful already out there. Many states have filed complaints on the AFFF, the firefighting foam. And there's a real likelihood that our case specific to that claim will get pulled into a multi-district litigation down in Carolina. That's a PFAS based product. Yeah, so that we have the two cases. One is specific to the PFAS chemicals. And the other is really on the AFFF PFAS chemical firefighting foam. I think we don't know because we don't know how much is out there. Yeah. So we know we're gonna find it. It's everywhere. So I just wanted to also acknowledge that we're in the process of retaining an outside law firm to assist the state of Vermont in this litigation. That process is undergoing. It should be finalized hopefully in the next couple of weeks. Obviously, we will inform the public about who that law firm is. But I think it goes without saying that we are suing multinational giant corporations. And we're gonna need assistance on this. This will be a fight. How would that arrangement work? It will work. It's a little bit too early, but I think it's fair to say that it would work similar to how we retained outside counsel in the opiate lawsuits. There's DuPont, the main company, and then there's four other DuPont offshoots. And Secretary Moore, you said that you're going to be doing more testing. Do you have an idea about when that's starting and when it's already started? Sure. So we had actually at the beginning of June put out a sampling plan for public comment. The public comment period closed on June 18th. We're in the process of responding to the input and feedback we received, but expect to start that testing later this summer. And do you know it could take like into the fall like you have an anticipated end date or when you look at the results out? Well act 21 requires us to complete the sampling by the end of this calendar year. So shortly thereafter. And could the results of that change the lawsuit there? Like if you find like a ton more, I mean, is it going to have any influence on the proceedings of the lawsuit here? We've listed some representative sites in each complaint where we found it, but it's certainly open to and the complaint anticipates, we're going to find more to add to that list as the sampling develops. And you're not asking for a specific amount yet? Right? Again, because we're such an unknown as much as how much is out there. So we need to restore the environment, repair the natural resources. We know this is a lot of places. And it's not cheap to repair. So I think the number is still out there. We're also seeking punitive damages as well as part of our complaint. So that might be additional money off topic questions. When I conclude that any other questions on this? Okay, thank you all for coming. Thank you.