You Just Found Out Your Water Isn’t Safe — and Nobody Told You How Long It Has Been That Way
If you live in Abilene and you just read that the City’s water supply has PFAS — “forever chemicals” — at levels averaging 6.3 times what the EPA says is safe, you are sitting at a kitchen table asking questions that should have been answered for you months or years ago. Is the water making my family sick? How long has this been going on? The City got $8.7 million in settlement money — does any of that come to us? Should I be testing my blood? Should I be worried about the kidney cancer in my family, the thyroid condition, the high cholesterol that never made sense?
We are going to answer every one of those questions on this page — not with slogans, but with the actual law, the actual science, and the actual evidence roadmap that a PFAS contamination case in Taylor County demands. We are Attorney911, a Texas trial firm that takes toxic tort cases and fights for families exposed to chemicals that should never have been in their water. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. And the first thing we want you to understand is this: the contamination is documented, the science is real, and you have rights — but the evidence that proves your personal exposure is on a clock, and that clock is already running.
What Is Happening in Abilene’s Water Right Now
The City of Abilene has documented PFAS contamination in its municipal water supply at levels that far surpass the federal government’s newly established safety standards. The City’s Northeast Plant has been identified as a significant contamination point, with PFAS levels averaging 6.3 times the EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Level. The City Council is considering a $442,100 contract with HDR Engineering to begin planning how to bring the water supply into compliance with the EPA’s PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation by the April 2029 deadline. The City has already received $8,714,967.76 in PFAS settlement funds — money that came from national litigation against PFAS chemical manufacturers.
Here is what that means in plain terms. The federal government decided, in April 2024, that there is no safe level of certain PFAS chemicals in drinking water — it set the health goal at zero — and capped what is legally allowed at four parts per trillion. Abilene’s water is running more than six times above that cap. The City is beginning a multi-year process to fix it. And the settlement money the City received is for infrastructure — for cleaning the water — not for compensating the families who have been drinking it.
That last point is the one the generalist misses, and it may be the most important thing on this page. The $8.7 million does not cover your family. It does not pay for your medical monitoring. It does not compensate you for the cancer that may be developing silently right now, years after you first drank water from a tap that was contaminated without your knowledge. Individual claims against the PFAS manufacturers — the companies that made these chemicals, knew they were dangerous, and allowed them to contaminate public water supplies across the country — are separate from the municipal settlement. Your right to pursue those claims is still alive. But proving them requires action that starts now, not in 2029.
What PFAS Actually Are — and Why They’re Called “Forever Chemicals”
PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are a family of thousands of synthetic chemicals that have been used since the 1940s in everything from nonstick cookware to stain-resistant carpets to food packaging to firefighting foam. What makes them “forever chemicals” is the one thing they all share: the carbon-fluorine bond at their core is one of the strongest chemical bonds in organic chemistry. It does not break down. Not in water. Not in soil. Not in your body.
“PFAS are widely used, long lasting chemicals, components of which break down very slowly over time. Because of their widespread use and their persistence in the environment, many PFAS are found in the blood of people and animals all over the world.”
That is the EPA’s own description, published when the agency finalized the first-ever federal drinking water standard for these compounds. The key phrase is “found in the blood of people all over the world.” PFAS do not pass through you. They accumulate. They bind to proteins in your blood, concentrate in your liver and kidneys, and stay there — for years. Some PFAS compounds have half-lives in the human body measured in years, not days. That is why a person who drank contaminated water in Abilene for a decade carries a chemical record of that exposure inside their bloodstream, right now, today. And it is why blood serum testing is the single most powerful piece of individual evidence in a PFAS exposure case.
The Health Conditions Linked to PFAS Exposure
The science connecting PFAS to human disease is still developing — we will not overstate it, and neither should any lawyer you talk to. But what is established is serious, and it is growing. The most authoritative findings come from the C8 Science Panel, a group of independent epidemiologists who studied a community of approximately 69,000 people exposed to PFOA-contaminated drinking water in West Virginia and Ohio. The panel found a “probable link” between PFOA exposure and six medical conditions:
- Kidney cancer — one of the most serious PFAS-linked malignancies
- Testicular cancer — another cancer with a documented probable link
- Thyroid disease — disruption of thyroid function
- Elevated cholesterol — changes in blood lipid levels
- Ulcerative colitis — inflammatory bowel disease
- Pregnancy-induced hypertension — high blood pressure during pregnancy
In 2023, the International Agency for Research on Cancer — the world’s leading cancer-science authority — classified PFOA as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans, based on sufficient animal evidence and strong mechanistic evidence. PFOS was classified as Group 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans. The EPA’s own scientific findings drove the decision to set the health-based goal at zero — meaning the agency concluded there is no amount of PFOA or PFOS in drinking water that carries no risk.
Here is what this means for a family in Abilene. If you have been drinking water from the municipal supply — particularly from the Northeast Plant service area — for years, and you or a family member has been diagnosed with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, or ulcerative colitis, the connection between your water and your disease is a question that demands investigation. Not a guarantee. Not a slam dunk. A question that a board-certified toxicologist and epidemiologist can help answer — but only if the exposure is documented before the evidence disappears.
The EPA’s New Drinking Water Standard — and What Abilene’s Numbers Mean
In April 2024, the EPA issued the PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation — the first-ever enforceable federal standard for PFAS in public water systems. The rule established Maximum Contaminant Levels for six PFAS compounds. For PFOA and PFOS — the two most studied and most regulated compounds — the MCL is set at 4.0 parts per trillion. The Maximum Contaminant Level Goal — the level at which there is no known or expected health risk — is set at zero.
Four parts per trillion. That is roughly equivalent to a single drop of water in twenty Olympic-sized swimming pools. The EPA set the line there because the agency concluded that any detectable amount of these chemicals in drinking water carries some risk. And Abilene’s Northeast Plant is running at 6.3 times that level — averaging approximately 25 parts per trillion or more.
The compliance deadline is April 2029. That gives public water systems five years to implement treatment technologies — typically granular activated carbon filtration or ion exchange — capable of removing PFAS to below the MCL. The City of Abilene has begun that process with the HDR Engineering contract. But here is the critical point for your legal rights: the water is contaminated now. It has been contaminated for however long PFAS has been present at levels above the standard — potentially years or decades before the EPA even had a standard to measure against. Every day you drank that water, every meal you cooked with it, every shower you took in it, your body was absorbing chemicals that accumulate and do not leave.
The EPA has also designated PFOA and PFOS as CERCLA hazardous substances, effective July 2024. That designation means that releases of one pound or more of PFOA or PFOS in a 24-hour period must be reported to federal authorities, and it opens the door for cost-recovery actions against the parties responsible for the contamination. CERCLA liability is strict, joint-and-several, and retroactive — meaning a company that released PFAS decades ago can still be held responsible for cleanup costs today. That matters because it helps identify who pays for the contamination of Abilene’s water.
Who Is Responsible for the Contamination
PFAS contamination in a municipal water supply does not happen by accident. It happens because a chemical manufacturer designed, produced, and sold products containing PFAS that entered the environment — through industrial discharge, through firefighting foam use, through landfill leachate, through atmospheric deposition — and made their way into the water sources that feed the public system. Identifying who is responsible in Abilene requires source-tracing, but the defendant categories are well established in the national PFAS litigation.
PFAS chemical manufacturers — companies like 3M, DuPont, Chemours, and related entities — designed and marketed these chemicals for decades. The public record now includes extensive internal corporate documents showing that some manufacturers knew about the health risks of PFAS long before the public or regulators did. 3M has already agreed to pay between approximately $10.3 billion (present value) and up to $12.5 billion over 13 years to public water systems for PFAS remediation. DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva agreed to approximately $1.185 billion with public water providers. These settlements are for water system cleanup — not for individual injury compensation.
AFFF firefighting foam manufacturers — if the contamination in Abilene includes PFOS or other compounds associated with firefighting foam, the source may trace to military or industrial use of AFFF. The AFFF Multi-District Litigation (MDL-2873) in the District of South Carolina is actively litigating claims against AFFF manufacturers, with more than 15,000 actions pending as of June 2026. Abilene is home to Dyess Air Force Base, located immediately southwest of the city. The military’s historical use of AFFF firefighting foam — in training exercises, emergency responses, and equipment testing — is a nationally recognized PFAS contamination vector. Whether Dyess AFB is a source of the contamination in Abilene’s water is a question that requires hydrogeological investigation, discharge-record discovery, and fate-and-transport analysis. But the possibility is significant enough that any thorough investigation must examine it.
The City of Abilene — as the operator of the municipal water system, the City has duties to test, report, and notify residents about contamination. Claims against the City face significant barriers under the Texas Tort Claims Act, which provides limited waivers of governmental immunity and includes a discretionary-function exception that likely shields the City’s policy-level decisions about water treatment methods and timing. However, operational-level failures — failures to test, failures to report, failures to notify residents — may fall outside the discretionary-function exception. Claims against the municipality are not the primary path to individual compensation in a PFAS case; the primary defendants are the chemical manufacturers whose products caused the contamination.
Potential industrial dischargers — facilities in the Abilene area whose PFAS-containing discharges may have entered the water supply. Identification requires hydrogeological source-tracing and discharge-record discovery.
Texas Law and Your Legal Rights
Texas law governs your individual claim for PFAS exposure injury, and several features of Texas law are particularly important in a toxic tort case.
The statute of limitations. Texas imposes a two-year deadline for personal injury and wrongful death actions. In a toxic exposure case, however, the question is not when the exposure occurred — it is when you discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, that your injury was connected to the exposure. Texas courts have applied the discovery rule in latent disease and toxic exposure matters, meaning the clock may not start ticking until you knew or should have known that your health condition was caused by PFAS in your water. This is critically important in Abilene, where many residents are only now learning about the contamination. If you were diagnosed with kidney cancer three years ago but only learned this month that your water was contaminated with PFAS at 6.3 times the EPA standard, the discovery rule may mean your deadline has not yet expired. But this is not a guarantee — the rule’s application is case-specific, and some states impose an outer “statute of repose” that can cut off a claim regardless of discovery. You need to talk to a lawyer in Texas who understands toxic tort accrual to confirm the deadline that applies to your specific situation.
The Daubert/Robinson standard. Texas applies the Daubert/Robinson standard for expert witness admissibility, which means your causation experts — the toxicologist who testifies that PFAS can cause kidney cancer, the epidemiologist who testifies that your specific exposure caused your specific disease — must survive a rigorous reliability challenge. This is the single most contested battleground in any toxic tort case. The defense will hire its own experts to argue that the science is uncertain, that your disease has other causes, that the exposure dose was too low. A generalist lawyer who does not understand how to build a Daubert-proof causation case can lose before a jury ever hears the facts.
Comparative fault. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar — your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, and if you are more than 50% at fault, you are barred from recovery. In a PFAS case, the defense may try to argue that you contributed to your own exposure by not filtering your water, not moving, or not seeking testing sooner. These arguments are predictable and answerable, but they must be anticipated.
Governmental immunity. Claims against the City of Abilene are constrained by the Texas Tort Claims Act. The Act provides limited waivers of governmental immunity but includes a discretionary-function exception that likely shields the City’s decisions about water treatment methods, timing, and priorities. The real recovery in a PFAS case comes from the chemical manufacturers — companies with deep pockets, established liability records, and ongoing national settlement frameworks — not from the municipality.
Wrongful death. If a family member has died from a condition potentially linked to PFAS exposure — kidney cancer, testicular cancer — a wrongful death claim may be available to surviving family members. Texas wrongful death actions are subject to the same two-year statute of limitations, with the same discovery-rule questions about when the clock starts. If you believe a loved one’s death may be connected to PFAS-contaminated water in Abilene, wrongful death claims have their own procedural requirements and beneficiary structure that must be evaluated promptly.
The Evidence That Proves Your Exposure — and How Fast It Can Disappear
Every PFAS exposure case is built from two categories of evidence: the evidence that proves the water was contaminated, and the evidence that proves you were exposed to that contamination. The first category is largely in government hands. The second category is in your blood — literally — and it is the more urgent one.
Historical water quality testing data from the City’s Northeast Plant and all other Abilene water treatment facilities. These records establish the duration, concentration, and scope of resident exposure. Municipal records are retained per regulatory requirements, but obtaining them may require formal discovery or public information requests. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) oversees public water system compliance reporting at the state level. EPA compliance correspondence, violation notices, and TCEQ inspection reports for Abilene’s water systems provide objective, government-generated documentation of contamination scope. These are available through FOIA and TCEQ public information requests — but processing delays make early requests important.
Internal City communications — council meeting minutes, staff emails, internal memoranda regarding PFAS awareness, testing results, and response decisions. These records establish when the City knew or should have known about contamination levels and whether residents were timely warned. Government email retention policies vary, and routine deletion cycles can destroy relevant communications within months. A preservation letter from a lawyer, sent early, can freeze these records before they cycle out.
AFFF usage, storage, and discharge records from Dyess Air Force Base. If the contamination source includes military firefighting foam discharge, these records identify the source and the timeline. Federal facility records are maintained under Department of Defense regulations, but access requires formal procedures. The military base’s environmental records — including any existing PFAS sampling or site assessments — may already exist in DOD environmental databases.
HDR Engineering evaluation reports — once the City’s planning contract is underway, HDR will generate detailed contamination mapping, fate-and-transport analysis, and treatment recommendations. These reports will document the severity and scope of exposure with engineering precision. The contract is pending City Council approval, and reports will be generated over months. A lawyer should track these reports as they are produced, because they may serve as powerful evidentiary documentation of contamination scope.
Blood serum PFAS testing results — this is the most important individual evidence in your case, and it is the most time-sensitive. A simple blood test can measure the concentration of PFAS compounds in your serum. That number is your personal exposure record — direct biological evidence of how much of these chemicals has accumulated in your body. Here is why urgency matters: once the City installs treatment and reduces PFAS in the water, your serum levels will begin to decline as your body slowly eliminates the compounds (over years). The testing you get now — while contamination is still documented at 6.3x the standard — captures your peak exposure baseline. Wait until the water is clean, and the number that proves how much you absorbed is gone.
Blood Serum Testing: Your Most Powerful Personal Evidence
If there is one action this page should drive you to take, it is this: get your blood tested for PFAS. Not through a home kit — through a qualified laboratory that can measure specific PFAS compounds in serum. The test measures compounds like PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA, and others. The results give you a number — a concentration in nanograms per milliliter — that documents exactly how much of these forever chemicals has accumulated in your body.
That number does three things for your case. First, it proves exposure. In a toxic tort case, the defense will argue that you cannot prove you were actually exposed to the defendants’ chemicals — that your disease could have come from anywhere, from food packaging, from nonstick pans, from carpet treatment. A blood serum test that shows elevated PFAS levels, combined with documented water contamination at your residence, closes that argument. Second, it establishes dose. The C8 Science Panel’s findings on the relationship between PFOA exposure and disease risk are dose-dependent — higher serum levels correlate with higher disease risk. Your serum number places you on that curve. Third, it creates a baseline. If you develop a PFAS-linked condition in the future — kidney cancer five years from now, thyroid disease ten years from now — the serum test you get today is the evidence that connects that future disease to the water you were drinking when the contamination was at its worst.
Get the test now. Document your Abilene residency — how long you have lived here, which water service area you are in, whether you are in the Northeast Plant’s coverage zone. Preserve your medical records documenting any conditions potentially linked to PFAS. And if a family member has been diagnosed with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, or ulcerative colitis while living in Abilene, document the timeline — when the diagnosis was made, how long they had been drinking the water, and what their serum levels show today.
How the Defense Will Fight Your Case — and How We Answer
PFAS litigation is not a car wreck case. The defense machinery is sophisticated, well-funded, and built on decades of experience fighting chemical exposure claims. Here are the plays you should expect — and how each one is answered.
Play 1: “Everyone has PFAS in their blood — you can’t prove our chemicals caused your disease.” This is the defense’s opening move in nearly every PFAS case. The argument is that PFAS is ubiquitous — it is in food packaging, household dust, consumer products — so your elevated serum levels could have come from anywhere. The counter is specific: documented water contamination at your residence at 6.3 times the EPA standard, serum levels elevated above the general population baseline, residential history establishing long-term exposure to the contaminated source, and dose-response evidence from the C8 Science Panel showing that higher exposure correlates with higher disease risk. The defense wants the jury to think your exposure is generic. The proof shows it is specific — it came from your tap.
Play 2: “The City already settled — this case is over.” The $8.7 million the City of Abilene received came from national PFAS manufacturer settlements designed to fund water system remediation — not to compensate individuals for disease. That settlement does not cover your medical monitoring, your cancer treatment, your lost wages, or your pain and suffering. It does not preclude your individual claim against the manufacturers. The defense will try to make you think the money is gone. It is not — your share is still waiting to be claimed.
Play 3: The Daubert challenge — “Your experts’ science isn’t reliable enough for a jury.” The defense will move to exclude your causation experts under Texas’s Daubert/Robinson standard, arguing that general causation (PFAS causes this disease) and specific causation (your exposure caused your disease) are not sufficiently established. This is where cases are won or lost before trial. The counter requires board-certified toxicologists, environmental epidemiologists, and hydrogeologists who can withstand cross-examination and whose methodology is bulletproof. The C8 Science Panel findings, IARC’s Group 1 classification of PFOA, and the growing body of EPA regulatory findings provide the scientific foundation — but the experts must build the bridge from that foundation to your specific case.
Play 4: “The disease came from something else during the latency period.” PFAS-related diseases have long latency periods — the time between exposure and disease manifestation can be years or decades. The defense will exploit that gap, arguing that your kidney cancer could have been caused by smoking, diet, genetics, occupational exposure, or any number of other factors during the years between your exposure and your diagnosis. The counter is a differential diagnosis — a systematic elimination of alternative causes by a qualified physician, combined with your documented exposure history and serum levels, that leaves PFAS contamination as the most likely explanation.
Play 5: The governmental immunity shield. If your claim includes the City of Abilene as a defendant, the City will assert governmental immunity under the Texas Tort Claims Act. The discretionary-function exception will likely shield the City’s decisions about treatment technology and compliance timelines. But operational failures — failures to test, failures to report results, failures to notify residents — may fall outside the exception. The real recovery, however, comes from the chemical manufacturers, not the City. The City is a defendant of opportunity; the manufacturers are the defendants of substance.
What a PFAS Exposure Case Is Worth
We will not promise you a number — every case depends on its specific facts, and any lawyer who quotes you a settlement figure before reviewing your medical records, your serum levels, and your exposure history is not being honest with you. What we can give you is the framework that drives value in these cases.
Medical monitoring only — no diagnosed disease: If you have elevated PFAS serum levels and documented exposure to contaminated water but have not been diagnosed with a PFAS-linked condition, your case centers on the cost of ongoing medical surveillance — regular blood testing, kidney function monitoring, thyroid screening, and clinical surveillance designed to catch disease early if it develops. These cases typically range from $25,000 to $75,000 per individual. The value is in the monitoring protocol itself, which a life-care planner prices out based on the specific compounds in your blood and the conditions they are associated with.
Documented PFAS-related disease: If you have been diagnosed with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, or another condition with a documented link to PFAS exposure, and your exposure history and serum levels support a causation finding, the case value scales dramatically. These cases can range from $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 or more per individual, depending on the severity of the disease, the cost of past and future medical treatment, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and the strength of the specific causation evidence. A kidney cancer case with clear exposure documentation, elevated serum levels, a long residential history in the Northeast Plant service area, and a differential diagnosis eliminating alternative causes is a fundamentally different case from a medical monitoring claim — and it is valued accordingly.
Wrongful death: If a family member has died from a PFAS-linked condition, the case includes the value of the life itself, the financial support the decedent would have provided, the conscious pain and suffering before death, and the loss to surviving family members. These cases can exceed $5,000,000 depending on the decedent’s age, earning capacity, and the strength of the causation evidence.
Punitive damages. The public record of PFAS manufacturers’ internal knowledge of health risks — dating back decades — is extensive. Evidence that companies knew these chemicals were dangerous and continued to market them without adequate warnings is the foundation for punitive damages. Texas law allows punitive damages in cases involving gross negligence or willful misconduct. The caps and standards that apply depend on the specific claim characterization and the defendant, and we would evaluate that with you based on the facts of your case.
Aggregate mass tort value. Abilene has approximately 125,000 residents. With contamination at 6.3 times the EPA standard, the potential exposure population is substantial. Individual recovery depends on establishing specific causation — but the aggregate value of claims for this community could be significant. The national PFAS litigation infrastructure, including the AFFF MDL and the 3M/DuPont settlement framework, provides coordination opportunities and access to developed expert panels and internal corporate documents already produced in discovery.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we guarantee is that we will build your case with the same rigor we would bring to any toxic tort claim — because the science, the law, and the evidence demand nothing less.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of a PFAS exposure case, from the day you call to the day a number is on the table.
Week one: Preservation. The day you contact us, preservation letters go out — to the City of Abilene, to TCEQ, to any potential industrial sources — ordering them to freeze water quality testing data, internal communications, AFFF usage records, and compliance correspondence. These letters convert routine deletion into sanctionable destruction. They are the first move because the records they protect are the ones the defense is counting on disappearing.
Weeks two through four: Records demands. Public information requests go to the City for historical water quality data. FOIA requests go to the EPA for compliance correspondence and violation notices. TCEQ inspection reports are requested. If Dyess Air Force Base is a potential source, federal facility environmental records are pursued through the appropriate procedures. The goal is to build the contamination timeline — when did PFAS first appear in Abilene’s water, at what concentrations, and for how long.
Months one through three: Blood serum testing and medical documentation. You obtain PFAS blood serum testing through a qualified laboratory. Your medical records are collected and organized — diagnoses, treatment histories, lab results, imaging studies. If you have a PFAS-linked condition, your treating physicians’ records become the foundation of the specific causation case. A life-care planner begins building the future-cost projection for medical monitoring or disease treatment, depending on your health status.
Months three through six: Expert development. A board-certified toxicologist is retained to address general causation — whether PFAS can cause your specific condition. An environmental epidemiologist addresses specific causation — whether your documented exposure caused your specific disease. A hydrogeologist maps PFAS fate and transport through Abilene’s water system, identifying source areas and exposure pathways. Each expert’s methodology is built to survive a Daubert/Robinson challenge, because that challenge is coming.
Months six through twelve: Discovery and coordination. If your case is filed in federal court — environmental contamination claims arising in Taylor County would be filed in the Northern District of Texas, Abilene Division — discovery begins. Internal corporate documents from PFAS manufacturers, much of which has already been produced in the national AFFF MDL and other coordinated proceedings, are obtained. Depositions of corporate representatives, City officials, and water system operators are taken. The HDR Engineering reports, once completed, are tracked and incorporated.
Year one and beyond: Resolution. Mass tort cases do not resolve overnight. The national PFAS litigation infrastructure provides benchmarks — the 3M and DuPont settlement frameworks, the AFFF MDL bellwether process, the evolving EPA regulatory landscape. Individual cases may resolve through the national settlement framework, through individual mediation, or through trial. The timeline depends on the strength of your specific causation evidence, the stage of the national litigation, and the willingness of defendants to engage.
Your First Steps: Protecting Your Health and Your Rights
If you live in Abilene and you have been drinking municipal water — particularly if you are in the Northeast Plant service area — here is what you should do, in order.
Get your blood tested for PFAS. This is step one. Contact a laboratory that offers PFAS serum testing — your physician can order it, or we can help you identify a qualified lab. The test measures specific PFAS compounds in your blood. The number you get back is your personal exposure record, and it is most accurate now, while the contamination is still documented at 6.3 times the EPA standard. Once treatment is installed and water contamination drops, your serum levels will begin to decline. The baseline you establish today is the evidence you may need five or ten years from now.
Document your residency. Gather records showing how long you have lived in Abilene and at what addresses. Utility bills, lease agreements, property tax records, driver’s license history — anything that establishes your duration of exposure to the municipal water supply. If you lived in the Northeast Plant service area, document that specifically.
Preserve your medical records. If you have been diagnosed with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, elevated cholesterol, or any immune system dysfunction, collect your complete medical records — diagnosis reports, lab results, imaging studies, treatment histories, medication records. These documents are the foundation of your disease-specific claim.
Do not sign anything from the City or from any claims administrator without having a lawyer review it. If you receive a communication offering you a settlement, a release, or a waiver — from the City, from a PFAS manufacturer, from a claims administrator — do not sign it. Some of these documents are designed to release your rights in exchange for a payment that is a fraction of what your case is worth. Bring it to us first. We will tell you what it is and what it means.
Talk to a lawyer who understands toxic tort law. Not every personal injury lawyer understands PFAS litigation. The science is complex, the regulatory framework is evolving, and the defense playbook is sophisticated. You need a firm that knows how to build a Daubert-proof causation case, that understands the discovery rule’s application to latent disease, and that has access to the expert witnesses and national litigation infrastructure that these cases demand.
Why Attorney911
We are a Texas trial firm. We handle toxic tort cases, catastrophic injury cases, and wrongful death cases — and we bring to every one of them the specific knowledge that the science, the law, and the evidence require.
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner — 27+ years of Texas trial practice, admitted to the State Bar of Texas since November 1998, admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and he approaches every case the way a reporter approaches a story: find the documents, find the proof, find the truth that the other side is counting on nobody finding. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney — admitted to the State Bar of Texas in 2012, admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Lupe came to this firm from a national insurance-defense firm, where he sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the other side values a case — what they look for, what they fear, and where they are vulnerable — and he uses that knowledge for our clients now. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Hablamos Español.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. We have live staff available 24/7 — not an answering service, not a chatbot, not a call center. When you call, you talk to a person who can help. We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients across our years of practice, and we bring that experience to every case we take. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but the experience behind those results is real, and it is what we put to work for you.
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. That is 1-888-288-9911. The call is free. The consultation is free. And the evidence clock is running — every day you wait is a day your serum levels are declining, a day records are cycling toward deletion, a day the defense is counting on. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you. You can also reach us through our contact page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the City of Abilene for PFAS contamination?
Claims against the City of Abilene face significant barriers under the Texas Tort Claims Act, which provides limited waivers of governmental immunity and includes a discretionary-function exception that likely shields the City’s policy-level decisions about water treatment methods and compliance timelines. However, operational-level failures — failures to test, failures to report results, failures to notify residents — may fall outside the exception. In practice, the primary defendants in a PFAS exposure case are the chemical manufacturers whose products caused the contamination, not the municipality. The City received $8.7 million in PFAS settlement funds for infrastructure remediation — that money is for cleaning the water, not for compensating individuals.
The City already got $8.7 million — does that cover my family?
No. The $8,714,967.76 the City received came from national PFAS manufacturer settlements designed to fund water system remediation — installing treatment technology, upgrading infrastructure, bringing the water into compliance with EPA standards by 2029. That settlement does not cover your medical monitoring, your cancer treatment, your lost wages, your pain and suffering, or any individual injury claim. It does not preclude you from filing a separate individual claim against the PFAS manufacturers. Your right to seek individual compensation is separate and independent.
How long do I have to file a PFAS exposure claim in Texas?
Texas imposes a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death actions. However, in toxic exposure cases involving latent disease, Texas courts have applied the discovery rule — meaning the clock may not start until you knew or reasonably should have known that your injury was connected to the PFAS in your water. Many Abilene residents are only now learning about the contamination, which means the deadline may not have started running yet. But this is case-specific and depends on your individual circumstances. Do not assume you have plenty of time — talk to a lawyer to confirm the deadline that applies to your situation.
What health conditions are linked to PFAS exposure?
The C8 Science Panel — independent epidemiologists who studied a large population exposed to PFOA-contaminated water — found a “probable link” between PFOA exposure and six conditions: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, elevated cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified PFOA as Group 1 (carcinogenic to humans) and PFOS as Group 2B (possibly carcinogenic). If you have been diagnosed with any of these conditions while living in Abilene and drinking municipal water, the connection to your water supply is a question that demands investigation.
Should I get my blood tested for PFAS?
Yes — and the sooner the better. A blood serum test measures the concentration of PFAS compounds in your blood, giving you a personal exposure record that is direct biological evidence of how much of these chemicals has accumulated in your body. This test is most valuable now, while contamination is still documented at 6.3 times the EPA standard. Once the City installs treatment and water contamination levels drop, your serum levels will begin to decline as your body slowly eliminates the compounds. The baseline you establish today is evidence you may need years from now if a PFAS-linked condition develops.
Is Dyess Air Force Base a possible source of the contamination?
Dyess Air Force Base, located immediately southwest of Abilene, is a significant regional presence and a potential PFAS source. The military’s historical use of AFFF firefighting foam — in training exercises, emergency responses, and equipment testing — is a nationally recognized PFAS contamination vector, particularly for PFOS. The AFFF Multi-District Litigation (MDL-2873) in the District of South Carolina is actively litigating similar claims across the country. Whether Dyess AFB is a source of contamination in Abilene’s water requires hydrogeological investigation, discharge-record discovery, and fate-and-transport analysis. Any thorough investigation must examine this possibility.
What if I don’t have cancer yet but I’ve been drinking the water?
You may have a medical monitoring claim — a claim for the cost of regular medical surveillance designed to catch PFAS-linked diseases early if they develop. Medical monitoring is a recognized component of damages in toxic exposure cases, and it does not require a current disease diagnosis. It requires evidence of significant exposure to a toxic substance linked to latent disease. Your documented residence in Abilene, your PFAS serum levels, and the documented contamination of the water supply are the foundation. Medical monitoring cases typically range from $25,000 to $75,000 per individual, depending on the specific monitoring protocol required.
How much is a PFAS exposure case worth?
Every case depends on its specific facts. Medical monitoring cases — elevated serum levels, documented exposure, no diagnosed disease — typically range from $25,000 to $75,000 per individual. Cases involving documented PFAS-related disease — kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease with clear exposure history and causation evidence — can range from $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 or more. Wrongful death cases can exceed that range. Punitive damages may be available against PFAS manufacturers given the extensive public record of internal corporate knowledge of health risks. No lawyer can quote you a specific settlement figure without reviewing your medical records, your serum levels, and your exposure history.
Do I have to move out of Abilene to have a case?
No. Your claim is based on your past exposure — the time you spent drinking contaminated water while living in Abilene. Moving does not erase that exposure, and it does not eliminate your right to seek compensation for it. What matters is your residential history, your serum levels, and your medical documentation. If you have already moved away from Abilene but lived there for years during the contamination period, you may still have a claim. Document where you lived, when you lived there, and which water service area you were in.
What if I lived in Abilene years ago and moved away?
You may still have a claim. PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they accumulate in the body and break down extremely slowly — over years. If you lived in Abilene for a significant period and drank municipal water, your body may still carry elevated PFAS levels from that exposure. A blood serum test can measure your current levels. If those levels are elevated and you have a PFAS-linked health condition, the connection to your time in Abilene is a question worth investigating — regardless of how long ago you moved. Document your Abilene residency dates and addresses, and talk to a lawyer about whether the discovery rule keeps your claim alive.
If Your Family Has Been Drinking This Water, the Time to Act Is Now
The contamination in Abilene’s water is documented. The science connecting PFAS to serious disease is established and growing. The EPA has set a standard that Abilene’s water exceeds by more than six times. The City has begun a multi-year process to fix the water — but fixing the water does not fix the families who have been drinking it.
What fixes the families is evidence — your blood serum levels, your medical records, your residential history, preserved before the contamination drops and the proof fades. What fixes the families is a case built by lawyers who understand toxic tort law, who know how to survive a Daubert challenge, and who have access to the experts and the national litigation infrastructure that PFAS cases demand.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. That is 1-888-288-9911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. We serve your family fully in English or in Spanish — Hablamos Español. And the day you call is the day the evidence starts working for you instead of disappearing.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Legal Emergency Lawyers. We are here, we are ready, and the first conversation costs you nothing.