Gov. Phil Murphy's administration has ordered five companies responsible for widespread pollution of drinking water systems to spend millions of dollars to assess the extent of contamination and eventually clean up the pollution.

The directive by the state Department of Environmental Protection targets some of the biggest chemical manufacturers in the nation: 3M, DuPont, DowDuPont, Chemours and Solvay.

At issue are PFAS, which stands for polyfluoroalkyl substances — a group of man-made, toxic chemicals including PFOA, PFOS and GenX that have been in everyday use for almost 80 years.

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Nearly one in five New Jersey residents receive tap water that contains at least trace amounts of one of these chemicals, some of which have been linked to cancer.

Among the products containing the chemicals are non-stick pans, polishes, waxes, paints, cleaning products, and firefighting foams. Brand names that contain the chemicals include Stainmaster, Scotchgard, Teflon and Gore-Tex.

The chemicals have contaminated drinking water systems nationwide, including many throughout New Jersey. They do not break down in the environment.

The directive issued Monday is the first step toward compelling the companies to pay for what is anticipated to be a large-scale cleanup.

"We are putting these five companies on notice that many years of contaminating New Jersey’s precious drinking water and other natural resources will not go unchecked," said DEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe. "On behalf of all New Jerseyans, we will hold these companies accountable and insist that they step up to address the problem they have created.”

The case is built on New Jersey's Spill Act, which allows the state to seek damage claims against polluting entities. The directive requires the companies to provide information on the discharge of PFAS through wastewater treatment plants, air emissions and sales of products containing the chemicals.

The directive, which drew praise from environmental groups like the New Jersey Sierra Club, Clean Water Action and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, offers no estimate for the cost of a cleanup.

But Larry Hajna, a DEP spokesman, likened the directive to litigation the state undertook against Sunoco, BP and Shell over MTBE contamination that netted the state $350 million in recent years.

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Identified sources of fluorinated compounds in New Jersey include:

Naval Weapons Station Earle, Colts Neck (Monmouth County)

Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (Ocean County)

Solvay Specialty Polymer and Arkema, West Deptford (Gloucester County)

DuPont's Chambers Works facility, Pennsville (Salem County)

Testing required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2013 to 2016 showed that about 16 million Americans were being served water in which PFOA had been detected, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. Of those, 1.6 million were in New Jersey — the most of any state.

New Jersey has adopted some of the strictest standards for some PFAS chemicals in recent years that will force water providers to remove an industrial chemical found in several drinking water systems.

Among those affected water customers are 61,700 people in four towns served by Ridgewood Water, where 44 of its 52 municipal supply wells are contaminated.

Ridgewood Water filed a lawsuit last month against 3M, DuPont, Chemours, Honeywell International and other companies alleging they "knew or should have known" that their chemical firefighting products were soluble and "very likely to contaminate surface and groundwater," posing health risks. The utility is installing large carbon filters to remove the PFAS chemicals.

The new DEP directive lists why each company is responsible for New Jersey's contamination:

3M manufactured 85 percent of the world's PFOA and supplied the chemical to DuPont at its Chambers Works facility along the Delaware River in Salem County. 3M also supplied PFAS chemicals to Joint Base McGuire-Dix in Ocean County and the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center at Atlantic City airport.

DuPont/DowDuPont began using PFOA in the 1950s at Chambers Works to be used in fire-resistant and non-stick products. DuPont also accepted large quantities of PFOA waste from other manufacturing sites to process at its wastewater treatment plant at Chambers Works. The site and wells as far as 5 miles away are contaminated. DuPont also used PFOA at its Parlin Facility in Sayreville, in Middlesex County. Nearby wells in Perth Amboy are contaminated.

Chemours, a DuPont spinoff company, is the current owner of the Chambers Works facility and assumed some of the liability for the contamination.

Solvay, a Belgian chemical company, is the only company that New Jersey officials gave a cost estimate. The DEP wants Solvay to pay $3.1 million for the department's past efforts to investigate and clean up the chemicals at sites in Gloucester and Salem counties. The company released "massive amounts" of chemicals into the air and water.

The companies cited on Monday had little to say about the directive.

Dan Turner, a DuPont spokesman, said the company "will work with [the DEP] to better understand the directive.”

In a statement, Chemours said it hasn't used those chemicals at its sites in New Jersey. While that may be true, Chemours has existed only since 2015 and inherited the liability at the contaminated Chambers Works site.

David Pringle, of Clean Water Action, said the move was long overdue.

"These polluters have been profiting from PFAS chemicals for years and now to need to pay for it -- the cleanup, the natural resource damages, and pollution prevention," he said. "Making polluters pay is not only a matter of fundamental fairness but also a deterrent to future wrongful acts."