TRENTON, NJ—Kelley Drye congratulates New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Ed Potosnak, and the State of New Jersey on securing federal court approval of two landmark settlements with 3M and with DuPont and related companies for PFAS and other contamination across the State.
The settlements were approved and entered as by the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for New Jersey, Judge Renée Marie Bumb, on August 7, 2026. In approving the settlements, Judge Bumb noted that the settlements achieved will provide “generational benefits” for the people of New Jersey to combat PFAS contamination and are designed to “dutifully carry out the task of healing the State of New Jersey from environmental contamination to the tune of billions of dollars here today and for decades to come.”
The DuPont settlement is valued at over $2 billion, the largest environmental recovery for a single state – and one of the largest legal recoveries of any kind – in U.S. history. The 3M settlement is valued between $400-$450 million and is also one of the largest legal recoveries in the history of New Jersey.
For decades, DuPont and 3M used and discharged PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), also known as “forever chemicals,” polluting drinking water, groundwater, surface waters, fish, and other vital natural resources throughout New Jersey. In 2019, New Jersey commenced a series of legal actions to recover for the natural resource injuries caused by PFAS, which are particularly pernicious to water resources. The DuPont and 3M Judicial Consent Orders entered on August 7 are both among the largest reported natural resource damages recoveries in history, ranking in the top five along with the natural resource recoveries by federal and state trustees arising from the 2010 BP/Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill and the 1990 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
The proposed settlements with 3M and the DuPont entities were announced in May and August of 2025, respectively. Consistent with New Jersey’s Spill Act, DEP published notices of both proposed settlements in the New Jersey Register and on DEP’s website. After sixty days of public comment, DEP considered and responded to all comments before seeking judicial approval. The State then moved for judicial approval of the settlements in late 2025. Since then, the State has resolved objections raised by 18 counties and a coalition of publicly owned wastewater treatment plants, aligning key stakeholders in support of the settlements.
An important facet to the DuPont settlement is that “old” DuPont – which changed its name to “EIDP” when it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Corteva in 2019 – has unlimited liability and responsibility to remediate to the State’s satisfaction all of its past and present industrial sites in New Jersey, including the four contaminated sites that were the subject of New Jersey’s litigations: Pompton Lakes Works, Parlin, Repauno, and Chambers Works. To ensure that New Jersey taxpayers are never burdened with DuPont’s cleanup costs, Chemours and the DuPont entities agreed to create a remediation funding source of up to $1.2 billion, supplemented by a $475 million reserve fund to be created by “new” DuPont and Corteva. These structures and mechanisms were required by the State to protect the public and the taxpayers in the event any of the responsible entities goes bankrupt or otherwise fails to meet its obligations.
The Kelley Drye team worked on this matter with our co-counsel, former New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Gwen Farley, former Deputy Attorney General Rick Engel, Deputy Director Paul Stofa, the larger team at the New Jersey Attorney General’s office, and our friends at the Dema Law firm and the Taft Firm. We lost our friend, client, and mentor, Rick Engel, to cancer as we were finalizing these settlements in March. We want to recognize Rick’s leadership, dedication, and passion for this case, the State of New Jersey, its environment, and its people. These settlements are just one part of Rick’s incredible legacy.
