June 19, 2026 | Mark Luis Foster
You’ve likely seen the news in the last day or two regarding PFAS, those forever chemicals that seem to be plaguing us in Minnesota. Of course, it’s worse than we thought. Dakota County, where I live, has released data that shows groundwater sampling from public environmental wells and private drinking wells from 2018-2025 were beyond state and federal drinking water guidelines.
Lovely.
I looked up the number of HOAs in Dakota County via our new mapping software, ATLASHOA, and there are 690 mapped associations. That’s a lot of people in HOAs (among others) affected by this malady in our water. From FOX 9:
Officials say the sample results found PFAS in all 27 environmental wells and in 94 of the 114 private drinking wells that were tested. There were also 18 types of PFAS detected, some of which were at levels above state and federal drinking water guidelines.
What’s the cause of all this PFAS? According to Dakota County’s site devoted to this issue, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) refers to more than 9,000 human-made chemicals. These chemicals repel water, oil and grease.
PFAS are referred to as forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment and often accumulate in wildlife and humans through exposure. According to Dakota County, this has been happening since the 1940s, with PFAS used in commercial and industrial applications, including:
- Metal plating
- Carpeting
- Waterproof clothing
- Upholstery
- Food paper wrappings
- Cookware
- Cosmetics
- Fire-fighting foam
There’s a rather alarming dashboard that shows the contamination issue spread across the county. You can check out the DASHBOARD HERE.
Fox 9 Report HERE.
