Five Kansas cities and a water district are part of a class action lawsuit filed against the largest manufacturer of the herbicide atrazine.

The federal lawsuit, which was filed this week in a U.S. District Court in southern Illinois, asks that atrazine-maker Syngenta pay for the cost of removing the chemical from the public’s drinking water.

Miami County Rural Water District No. 2 and the cities of Carbondale, Dodge City, Marion, Oswego and Plains are among the 16 communities in six states that are part of the lawsuit.

The most widely used herbicide in the United States, atrazine is spread on corn and sorghum fields every spring.

That chemical is washed into surface water and eventually finds its way into much of the country’s drinking water.

Atrazine is banned in the European Union.

The lawsuit claims that exposure to atrazine has been linked to birth defects, low birthweights and premature births. Other studies have shown that it is a possible human carcinogen and an endocrine disrupter, the lawsuit claims.

In a released statement, Syngenta called it “another frivolous atrazine lawsuit” that “only harms U.S. farmers.”

The company noted that since 2005 no water system in the country has been over the allowable limit for atrazine set by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a 1,000-fold safety standard.

Jere White, executive director of the Kansas Corn Growers Association and the Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Association, said he was surprised by the number of Kansas communities involved in the lawsuit.

That’s because two of the cities, Dodge City and Plains, pull their water source from aquifers, not surface water, and he has heard little public discussion about the lawsuits.

“We would maintain it is more about water systems being promised they could get money without any investment on their part,” White said.

Last fall, the Natural Resource Defense Council released a report that claimed the EPA wasn’t collecting data that took into account spikes in atrazine levels occurring during spring runoffs.

Following that report, the Lawrence Journal-World reported that one-time readings from public water systems in Kansas exceeded the annual average limit set by the EPA more than 300 times in five years. Some water systems had levels that were 15 times higher than the annual average limit.

The Miami County Rural Water District has added carbon to its water treatment process in large part because of atrazine levels, the water district’s attorney, Carl Hartley, said.

“I think it is a common-sense approach,” Hartley said. “If you are required to provide clean, safe water and an element is introduced in the environment that requires the process to be more expensive than it would be, your patrons carry that expense.”