[T]he state is talking to other companies that have used a chemical known to have contaminated water in southwestern Vermont, as environmental regulators consider whether to expand the scope of their testing.
Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, turned up in wells in Bennington and North Bennington and a water system in Pownal and now has been found in surface waters in the area. It is believed to have come from three industrial sites where it had been used.
“We’re still putting the final touches on an investigation that may lead us to do additional testing,” Environmental Conservation Commissioner Alyssa Schuren said Tuesday afternoon.
Schuren said this less than a week after samples from eight out of 10 streams and ponds in the Bennington area came back positive for PFOA.
The Bennington College campus pond contained the highest concentration found in that round of testing, measured at 79 parts per trillion, according to a news release Gov. Peter Shumlin’s office issued Thursday.
Nearby Paran Creek contained PFOA at concentrations between 16 and 38 parts per trillion, and the adjoining Walloomsac River contained between 8 and 9 parts per trillion.
The state Health Department’s scientists found those levels insufficient to pose health risks to swimmers or others using the water for recreation. Officials at the Department of Fish and Wildlife said such concentrations won’t make fish from these waters dangerous to eat.
The Department of Health has recommended a maximum of 20 parts per trillion in drinking water.
The contamination of surface waters was found after revelations that three areas in Bennington County — all of them near factories formerly owned by the same Vermont entrepreneur — show drinking water contaminated with PFOA. The suspected carcinogen was used to manufacture Teflon until companies voluntarily phased out its use in 2015.
The state is still awaiting results from additional sampling of wells in North Bennington that were conducted outside a 1.5-mile radius from the former Chemfab plant where the contaminant is thought to have originated, Schuren said. Within that radius more than 100 of 185 recently tested wells came back with levels exceeding the Health Department’s advisory limit — sometimes by orders of magnitude.
The Department of Environmental Conservation is also awaiting results of testing that Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, the company that purchased Chemfab in 2000, performed on soil samples around North Bennington, Schuren said.
Also pending are test results from samples pulled from sediment under water bodies in the Pownal and North Bennington areas, she said.
Still further samples taken from around the landfill in Bennington are being analyzed by the Environmental Protection Agency, Schuren said.
“In the coming days we’ll have a lot to share,” she said Tuesday. She didn’t identify any of the other former users of PFOA that the state has been in contact with.
The department will hold a community meeting in the Bennington area April 18, Schuren said, but no firm time or location has been determined.
