The Warminster Municipal Authority board voted Friday to hire law firm Anapol Weiss to consider suing firefighting foam manufacturers.
Board members of the Warminster Municipal Authority voted unanimously Friday afternoon to pay a legal firm to assess whether the authority could file a lawsuit to recoup its expenses over recent water contamination.
Anapol Weiss represents clients in those suits.
The Warminster Municipal Authority, which serves about 40,000 people, has been severely impacted by water contamination.
In all, six of the authority’s 18 wells were found to contain the chemicals above the EPA safety limit.
The military originally agreed to pay for the two others as well, but reneged after retesting about two years later found chemical levels had fallen back below the EPA recommended safety limit, Nemeroff said.
The well closures forced Warminster to purchase vast quantities of water from the North Wales Water Authority, which it currently uses for about 95 percent of its supply.
The military is not paying for those expenditures, as it abides by the EPA’s 70 ppt standard.
“The Navy and the Air Force have decided they are not going to cover the costs of treatment systems for other-contaminant related expenses for those wells that do not exceed the health advisory limits,” Nemeroff said.
At the meeting, the four-member board voted first to authorize Nemeroff to engage with Anapol Weiss and receive a fee structure for the firm’s work.