Family First Water916-751-1781 →
← All articles

LOCAL WATER & HOME

3M Will Pay $7.35 Billion Over Firefighting Foam. Here's Why Four Air Bases Around Sacramento Are on California's PFAS List.

This week 3M agreed to pay up to $7.35 billion to as many as 120,000 people who say "forever chemicals" in firefighting foam made them sick. It is one of the largest personal-injury settlements in American history, and the story behind it runs straight through the Sacramento region. Mather,...

Family First Water November 6, 2026

3M Will Pay $7.35 Billion Over Firefighting Foam. Here's Why Four Air Bases Around Sacramento Are on California's PFAS List.

This week 3M agreed to pay up to $7.35 billion to as many as 120,000 people who say "forever chemicals" in firefighting foam made them sick. It is one of the largest personal-injury settlements in American history, and the story behind it runs straight through the Sacramento region. Mather, McClellan, Beale and Travis all sit on the State Water Board's list of California military sites with a known or suspected PFAS release, and the foam at the center of the lawsuit is the reason.

What 3M agreed to this week

The settlement, reported by MPR News on November 5, resolves thousands of lawsuits that had been combined in a federal court in South Carolina. 3M will pay $50 million this year, then make annual payments from 2028 through 2034, for a total of up to $7.35 billion. The company did not admit liability, and its chairman and CEO William Brown called the deal "a significant milestone" for the company.

The claimants are firefighters, military personnel and people who lived near airports and bases where aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, was sprayed for decades to put out fuel fires and run training drills. According to AboutLawsuits.com, the settlement covers six qualifying conditions: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, liver cancer, thyroid cancer, thyroid disease and ulcerative colitis. It is separate from the roughly $10 billion 3M agreed in 2023 to pay public drinking water systems so they could install treatment. 3M says it finished phasing out all PFAS manufacturing at the end of 2025.

Why the Sacramento region knows this foam well

Firefighting foam is the single biggest reason PFAS shows up in groundwater near military installations. The State Water Resources Control Board explains that the military has used AFFF since the 1970s, and that through 2001 the foam was made with PFOS and, in some formulations, PFOA, the two best-known forever chemicals. Every time it was used for a training burn or a hangar fire-suppression test, some of it soaked into the ground below.

The Water Board counts 62 California military facilities with a known or suspected PFAS release. The list reads like a map of our service area and its neighbors: Mather and McClellan in Sacramento County, Beale near Marysville, Travis in Fairfield, plus the Roseville Armory, the Sacramento Army Aviation Support Facility and several sites in Stockton. These bases closed or changed missions years ago, but the chemistry did not leave with the planes. PFAS compounds do not break down in soil or water, which is how a training exercise in 1985 can still be measurable in a well today.

At former Mather Air Force Base, the Air Force Civil Engineer Center found PFOS and PFOA in groundwater near two maintenance hangars, a fire station and the old fire-training area. The Air Force built two granular activated carbon treatment systems, each able to clean up to 1,500 gallons per minute before the water is returned to the aquifer, and reports spending $3.3 million at Mather since 2014 on PFAS impacts to drinking water. Off-base wells in the area continue to be monitored.

What this means at your kitchen sink

Most households in Placer, El Dorado, Sacramento, Sonoma and Marin counties get water from a public utility that is required to test for PFAS and publish the results. Living a few miles from a former base does not mean your tap water is affected; the plumes are mapped and the utilities nearest them have been sampling for years. The Water Board's Division of Drinking Water has been working with the Department of Defense to identify and test municipal wells that could be at risk.

The homes with the most to learn are the ones on private wells, especially in the older rural pockets east of Rancho Cordova, around Beale and in the foothills, where the EPA's PFAS drinking water limits do not apply and no one tests unless the owner does.

The science on treatment is clear and worth knowing. The Air Force's own engineers at Mather describe granular activated carbon as "the leading treatment option" for PFOS and PFOA. In a home, that same principle shows up in two places: carbon media in a whole-home filter, and a reverse osmosis system at the kitchen sink, where a dense membrane rejects dissolved contaminants like PFAS, nitrates and lead that a standard carbon filter can let through. Whole-home systems also handle the everyday things, including chlorine and chloramine that dry out hair and skin, sediment, hardness and taste.

How to check your own water

Start with your utility's Consumer Confidence Report, which is mailed or posted every spring and now includes PFAS results. Look for PFOS and PFOA listed in parts per trillion. Next, type your zip code into the Environmental Working Group's Tap Water Database, which pulls the same state data and shows how your utility compares. If you are on a well, a certified lab can run a PFAS panel, and the State Water Board's PFAS page lists military sites so you can see whether one is near you.

Curious what's in your water? Book a complimentary water test — about 30 minutes, no obligation.

Healthier water, healthier family.

Sources