Lawsuits from around the country over toxic chemicals in firefighting foam are headed to federal court in South Carolina.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on Friday ordered 75 lawsuits sent to the District of South Carolina and assigned them to U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel for coordinated pretrial proceedings. Gergel sits in Charleston, according to the court.

The suits allege that aqueous film-forming foams, known as AFFFs, used to put out liquid fuel fires at airports, military bases and industrial sites released two chemicals, PFOA and PFOS, into groundwater and contaminated drinking water supplies, the panel’s order says. They were pending in eight federal districts, 44 of them in Colorado, the order says.

Foam makers Tyco Fire Products and Chemguard asked the panel to combine the cases in the District of Massachusetts or the Southern District of New York, and 3M joined their request. The plaintiffs all supported the Southern District of Ohio if the cases were combined.

The panel chose South Carolina instead.

“This district is not burdened by many MDLs and has the capacity and resources to successfully guide this litigation,” the panel wrote. It called Gergel “an experienced transferee judge who can prudently steer the litigation.”

No related case is pending in South Carolina, the panel noted, but it said that does not bar sending the litigation there.

The cases share questions about the chemicals’ toxicity, how they move through groundwater, what the manufacturers knew about the dangers and whether they warned users, according to the order. The panel said the manufacturers likely will raise identical government contractor defenses in many of the cases.

The panel turned down 3M’s request to add nine cases over the same family of chemicals that do not involve foam, including industrial discharges into the Tennessee River in Decatur, Alabama, and factory emissions in Hoosick Falls, New York. Those cases are different in kind, the panel said.

The panel also has been told of 16 related cases in nine districts. The 10 that involve foam claims could follow the others to Charleston.

Gergel, a Columbia native, has been a federal judge since 2010, after President Barack Obama nominated him, according to the Federal Judicial Center.