The Return of Fluoride to DeForest, WI
Change comes for Dane county village after board member who opposed it was defeated.
DeForest Village Hall on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025, in DeForest, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
It’s official: Fluoride will once again be added to DeForest’s water supply.
That’s after trustees voted 4-2 Tuesday to reintroduce that mineral, as recommended by numerous dental and public health associations.
The board’s vote follows an April 7 election, which saw the ouster of Taysheedra Allen, a former trustee who previously voted against fluoridation.
The engineering firm Vierbicher estimates it could cost $327,000 for DeForest to add fluoride to the water that’s pumped through four village wells. That estimate includes the cost of improvements recommended by state officials for the village’s water infrastructure.
At least some of those costs could be covered by a Wisconsin Department of Health Services grant.
It could be several months before fluoridated water is flowing through DeForest pipes, and village officials have elected to pursue a phased approach. They expect it will take between four to six months to bring fluoride to at least one of the wells. Some of the other wells will take longer, however, and it could be as long as 14 months before fluoridated water is being pumped through all four of the wells.
Many communities in the U.S. add fluoride to their water as a way to strengthen teeth and prevent cavities. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously heralded water fluoridation as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.
But false claims about negative health effects from fluoridated water have been spreading for decades.
In February of last year, DeForest trustees voted 4-3 to stop adding fluoride to the village’s water. Since then, the village board has seen a series of shake-ups. One anti-fluoride trustee was ousted in a September recall election, and another anti-fluoride board member resigned for personal reasons.
Even after DeForest’s pro-fluoride board president stepped down earlier this spring because of health issues, fluoride supporters thought they had enough votes for a re-fluoridation resolution to pass.
That resolution failed in March, however, when Trustee Jan Steffenhagen-Hahn flipped sides and voted against re-fluoridation. In 2025, Steffenhagen-Hahn had voted to keep fluoride in the water, so her more recent vote came as a surprise to some.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Steffenhagen-Hahn acknowledged how contentious the topic of fluoride has been.
“I haven’t ever known it to be this awful, and I’ve been here most of my 60 years,” Steffenhagen-Hahn said of the atmosphere in DeForest.
She said villagers must find a way heal, no matter the outcome of the latest vote.
“I just hope that we can finally all remember that we are neighbors,” she said.
Located just north of Madison, DeForest is home to some 13,000 people. Marc Storch is one of those residents.
He said DeForest voters have made their opinion on fluoride clear through the recall election that Storch helped organize in September as well as through the regular election in April.
“When people say we need a referendum (on fluoride), I’d say we already had several referendums,” Storch said.
During last month’s contest, pro-fluoride candidates Colleen Little, Alicia Williams and Melanie Bartholf were elected after getting between 27 and 34 percent of the vote each.
Allen, the only anti-fluoride candidate on that ballot, lost with less than 13 percent of the vote.
DeForest’s board is down to six trustees instead of seven after Jane Cahill Wolfgram, the former board president, stepped down. A vacant seat on the board still needs to be filled.
Fluoride is coming back to DeForest’s water after months of political shake-ups was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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