State ordered chemical companies to pay for pollution clean-up.

That’s the message that a group of major chemical companies have in response to being ordered by the state of New Jersey to pay for the cleanup of what are known as “PFAS” chemicals (short for polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances).The five companies -- DuPont, DowDuPont, Chemours, 3M and Solvay -- have all informed the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection that they have no intention to pay for statewide cleanup after a state directive issued in March asserted them to be financially responsible for PFAS contamination around the Garden State. But in letters first reported by Bloomberg, lawyers for each of the companies strongly object to the directive, question the state’s legal footing and declare that the have no intention of paying for the cleanup of the entire state. The amount of money at stake in this dispute is unknown, but is expected to reach massive levels. When the directive was announced, NJDEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe told NJ Advance Media that upgrading drinking water systems across the state to address PFAS chemicals could cost hundreds of millions of dollars -- that cost does not include any actual cleanup work.