TITUSVILLE, Fla. — The city of Titusville is joining a class action settlement involving contaminated drinking water.

The suit is directed at the 3M Company and Dupont.

The companies aren’t accused of putting the per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — also known as forever chemicals because they are nearly indestructible — directly into groundwater, but for their role in using those chemicals in products which would ultimately end up there.

Now, one Titusville woman’s quest to hold the two businesses responsible is finally coming to fruition.

Stel Bailey is the executive director of Fight for Zero, an organization pushing for a healthy community. She’s a cancer survivor, whose focus now is water that is safe to drink.

“It changed my perspective on health and prevention, and preventing these diseases, and one way to do that is clean drinking water,” Bailey said.

Bailey and her team began testing the city’s drinking water for signs of PFAS contamination in the groundwater throughout the Space Coast.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PFAS don’t break down in the environment and can move through soil and contaminated water sources. PFAS can be found in numerous commercial products like clothing, furniture, adhesives and non-stick cookware, among others.

Information from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry shows that if someone drinks water contaminated with PFAS over a long period, studies show that they can experience increased colesterol levels, decreases in infant birth weight, and an increased risk of certain types of cancer.

“When I first started addressing this, I think a lot of the cities for them it was the unknown," Bailey said. "It was scary, but Titusville has done a 180 — do the right thing, step up."

This week, the Titusville City Council voted to join a class action settlement against the 3M Company and Dupont, claiming these companies played a key role in the groundwater contamination.

“PFAS aren’t something put in the water by these companies, they’re in your cooking utensils, the coating on your pan, it’s in your waterproofing of your rain jacket," says Titusville Public Works director Kevin Cook. "For firefighting side, it’s in firefighting foam, which is where a lot of this started with the foam on airfields."

From there, the chemicals can seep into the water table, and the cost to test all the wells in the city over the next two years will be more than $30,000 — an amount the city is hoping to recoup through the lawsuit.

Bailey said she is happy the responsibility to pay could be put on the companies.

“The taxpayers, the utilities, the city, should not have the burden of cost in fixing this problem,” she said.

The settlement has gotten preliminary approval from the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.