[T]he state has reached a final agreement with Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics to provide access to municipal water for 245 Bennington homes that have wells contaminated by PFOA.
Gov. Phil Scott, Attorney General TJ Donovan and the Bennington legislative delegation announced Wednesday that the company will provide the majority of the $20 million to $25 million cost for water-line extensions on the eastern slope of the contaminated area.
“We were guided by one principle in this case: that access to clean drinking water is a basic human right,” said Donovan. “And I’m proud today that we can announce that we’re moving forward today in fulfilling that promise of bringing clean drinking water to the folks of Bennington County.”
Construction of water lines will begin this summer and should be completed by the end of the next construction season, the governor said. The company will also pay for 20 new wells in areas where water-line extensions were not possible and for long-term drinking water monitoring.
The state will contribute $4.7 million toward the water-line extension work.
Since the discovery of PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, contamination in a portion of Bennington surrounding two former ChemFab Corp. factories in 2016, the state has been working with Saint-Gobain — the French company that bought ChemFab in 2000 — to figure out how to provide long-term clean drinking water for area residents.
“When we heard the news that we had contaminated drinking water wells in Bennington, amongst our neighbors, it was shocking,” said Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, at a press conference Wednesday.
He said that some Bennington residents were still drinking bottled water and did not have enough water pressure to adequately shower. Donovan said members of the Bennington delegation had been “relentless” in pressing for long-term access to clean drinking water for their constituents.
PFAS are used in a wide array of manufactured products, from rain jackets to cookware to firefighting foam. While PFOA and PFOS — two of the most toxic PFAS compounds — have been phased out by industry, they do not easily break down, so chemicals used years ago persist in the environment.
Scientists now know that exposure to certain PFAS chemicals can lead to cancer, hormone disruption, immune system damages, developmental problems in children and low birth weight.
The state had reached an agreement in 2017 with the company to provide access to the municipal water system for properties on the western slope of the contaminated area. Those water-line extensions were completed last fall. With the new agreement, access to municipal drinking water will now have been provided to 470 homes and businesses in the Bennington area, according to the state.
Negotiations had stalled between Saint-Gobain and the state over payment for work on the eastern side of Bennington as the company had contended there were other sources of PFOA contamination, including a former landfill. State officials have said that emissions from the ChemFab plants were the main source of groundwater and soil contamination.
State officials had announced earlier this year that Saint-Gobain would be funding the majority of water-line extension work on the eastern side. Peter Walke, deputy secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, said the state was grateful the company had agreed to settle the matter outside of court.
Read VTDigger’s 2017 series on PFOA contamination in Bennington.
“We are here today much sooner than we would be had it been through a legal process, much sooner because they’re willing to be a part of this conversation,” he said.
Sears said there is an ongoing class action suit from residents who want the company to pay for medical monitoring costs and municipal drinking water fees.