BENNINGTON — A state study reclassifying the water supply in parts of Bennington, North Bennington and Shaftsbury to “nonpotable” — unsuitable for drinking — has raised worries about the cost of upgrading wells and connecting to municipal water.
Many homes within the designated area were connected to town water through a settlement with Saint-Gobain, which now owns ChemFab, the company responsible for widespread pollution in the Bennington area. But it was either impossible or impractical to hook up all homes in the area to municipal lines, and those who were left out of that deal are now responsible for securing long-term access to clean, safe water.
Bennington Town Manager Stuart Hurd said a total of 255 homes in the town of Bennington, which doesn’t include North Bennington, were affected by the pollution, and he estimated that 150 homes have been connected to municipal water.
“I’m guessing there are maybe in the range of 50 to 75 property owners who are in the reclassification area that are not connected to municipal water,” Hurd said.
The settlement requires Saint-Gobain to continually test wells and provide carbon filtration point-of-entry systems to anyone in the area whose levels of PFAS are above the state standard of 20 parts per trillion. Some had new wells drilled as part of the settlement, too, but those who haven’t had their systems replaced are wondering what the new designation will mean and what it will cost.
‘Something seems to be amiss’
In 2016, the state discovered per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, a class of chemicals also referred to as PFAS, in the drinking water supply of hundreds of Bennington residents. The contamination came largely from air pollution produced by two former factories, which closed in 1978 and 2002, run by ChemFab, a company that used PFAS to manufacture Teflon-coated fabrics. It’s now owned by Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp.
Studies have shown that ingestion of PFAS, particularly PFOA and PFOS, can cause high cholesterol, a weakened immune system, thyroid disease and cancer.
After the chemicals were widely discovered, Saint-Gobain was required to provide bottled water and install and maintain carbon filtering point-of-entry systems to residents. Later, a 2019 settlement between the state and Saint-Gobain required the company to pay for extensions to the municipal water system so residents with tainted water could be connected and required continual testing of residents’ wells in the affected area.
The company also funded a state study for reclassifying water in the area, in which the Department of Environmental Conservation concluded that a large swath of the area’s underground water supply is not suitable for drinking.
The state has begun proceedings to change the water from Class III, the automatic designation for Vermont groundwater, to Class IV, which signals that the water isn’t drinkable and likely won’t be for more than five years, the reclassification order says.
Saint-Gobain is responsible for remediating the pollution but isn’t required to cover the cost of upgrading water infrastructure for everyone in the newly designated area — which Donald Campbell, outgoing chair of the Bennington Selectboard, called a “ticklish” situation at a board meeting Monday night.
Generally, owning a house with an undrinkable water supply can sharply reduce the value of that house. Kathy Sollien, owner of Maple Leaf Realty in Bennington, said every individual has such a different situation; it’s hard to say what effect the reclassification on its own could have. Property values didn’t noticeably decline when news of the contamination first spread, she said, though it did push some buyers away.
“I think there are a lot of unknowns,” she said. “Could it affect value? Probably, or maybe marketability.”
Finding a new, drinkable water supply is likely to be a costly problem in the newly designated area. If residents drill new wells, they’ll be subject to stringent, and costly, requirements. Those within 200 feet of a municipal water line will be asked to connect to it — at the homeowners’ expense in some instances.
Many of the people trapped in this situation had PFAS levels in their water supply that were initially low, precluding Saint-Gobain from connecting them to municipal water lines.
“We have extended, and North Bennington has extended, our systems out into those areas, picking up as many of those people as we could at Saint-Gobain’s expense,” Hurd said. “And so now you have a situation where these people didn’t get that advantage because their wells were not contaminated, or they were contaminated at a very low level.”
But now, their water supply has been reclassified by the state as undrinkable.
And in some cases, homeowners say their water supply is fine, and they’re suffering no ill effects, but the reclassification makes their water supply a liability.
Al Bashevkin is one of those residents. His home is three houses away from the end of the municipal water line. Most of the other homes in his neighborhood aren’t connected to town water either, he said.
In 2016, levels of PFAS in his water well exceeded the state’s standards, but seven tests since then have come back clean. He and his wife have safe levels of PFAS in their blood, he said.
“We were not entitled to access town water via the consent order with Saint-Gobain, yet it is proposed by (the Department of Environmental Conservation) that our groundwater be reclassified as nonpotable,” he wrote in a letter to town and state officials. “Something seems to be amiss here.”
Drilling into contamination
PFAS are continually moving through the aquifer, and it can be hard to know where it’s going, said John Schmeltzer, a hazardous site manager for the Department of Environmental Conservation who’s working on the reclassification effort in Bennington.
“It’s the area that’s being classified, not the wells,” he said. “It is true some wells are clean, but there’s a good chance that, if you were to drill a new well, either you’re going to be drilling into contamination and have a contaminated well, or you’re going to have to drill through groundwater that is contaminated to potentially get the clean water.”
The reclassification order says the switch from Class III to Class IV is being made “to protect human health and the environment by providing an institutional control that notifies landowners, well drillers, and regulatory agencies that groundwater is or may be contaminated by PFAS.” It notes that, without following the state’s protocol, drilling a new well in a contaminated area could further degrade water quality and spread contamination.
PFAS levels in the area seem to be on a downward trend. Schmeltzer said he isn’t sure how long the contamination will exist in the aquifer, but when the state is sure it has dissipated in certain areas, it will change the designation back to Class III.
“I don’t anticipate that that’s going to happen anytime soon, but that is that’s why there’s ongoing monitoring,” he said.
Limited access to municipal water
Bashevkin has a point-of-entry system, installed through the settlement and said he isn’t currently worried about the safety of his water supply, which is tested several times per year.
If reclassification is going to take place, he argues, residents shouldn’t have to pay for the related costs. He is worried about his property value and that he would need to front the cost of a more expensive well, or pay for a connection to town water.
“I think that would be really unfair,” he said. “To no fault of any of the landowners here, our groundwater is claimed to be polluted. And that’s all on Saint-Gobain, and it’s all on ChemFab. We didn’t do anything to cause that.”
It may be impossible to extend municipal water to the far reaches of these neighborhoods, Hurd said. On the outskirts of a municipal system, where pipes don’t loop back into each other, water stagnates and chlorine — added to public water to kill disease-causing bacteria — dissipates.
Hurd said that, without substantial use of the water in those lines, the water could slowly become contaminated.
“So that’s the other consideration,” he said. “Can we, from an engineering perspective, get them water that will be safe? Or not?”
Despite widespread news about the contamination in Bennington since 2016, Hurd said property values, so far, haven’t been noticeably affected.
“But the other concerns about having access to municipal water — ‘How do I get there? How much does it cost me to get there? And can the town provide it?’ — those are questions that are going to have to be asked almost every time on an individual basis,” he said.
Concerns about the process
Explaining why Saint-Gobain wasn’t required to pay for municipal water system extensions to some neighborhoods, Schmeltzer cited the technical component — it may not be possible to install municipal water lines in areas without extensive water use.
“Then there’s the practical component, that there might be some areas that, for the most part, most of the wells are clean. And Saint-Gobain wasn’t willing to extend a water line a certain distance to connect all those homes because only two of the homes are contaminated,” Schmeltzer said. “So all those factors went in when we reached that settlement agreement.”
Mark Sekora, another resident in Bashevkin’s neighborhood, said he found it frustrating that the contamination was considered less widespread during the settlement talks, but the extent of the pollution seems to be considered differently now, when the cost is placed on residents.
“Why did they settle with Saint-Gobain and complete the water line project before reaching a decision to reclassify a large swath of Bennington’s water as nonpotable?” he said. “It seems like the state let them off the hook and then passed the burden onto landowners.”
Schmeltzer said the state held several monthlong public comment periods before settlements were reached, both in 2017 and 2019. While the reclassification process was mentioned there, the details weren’t yet clear.
“It’s hard to know what that means until it happens, in fairness to everyone there,” he said. “Those additional costs, to put in a new well, or to make those improvements, or the requirements of the well construction is not part of the settlement agreement.”
After Bashevkin raised concerns at Monday’s selectboard meeting, the state granted town officials’ request to extend a public comment period for reclassification until April 30. Otherwise, it would have closed on April 2. Schmeltzer will answer questions for residents at a selectboard meeting, likely April 12, Hurd said.
Hurd said the reclassification is needed because the groundwater is contaminated now or could be contaminated in the future because of the movement of PFAS. So, it’s likely the public comment period will address the lack of help available for people not fully included in the Saint-Gobain settlement.
“The only question, more for the Legislature and the state, is whether there’s any help available for people who are near the municipal water system and want to connect but who do not qualify under the Saint-Gobain agreement,” Hurd said.
Chris Poggi lives near Bashevkin and shares many of his concerns. Her well tested positive for PFAS at first, but it’s recently been clean.
She said she’s had a positive experience with the state, and officials have been communicative, but she’s also frustrated. She and her husband are getting older, she said, and may want to sell her house soon, and she isn’t sure what that process might look like now. The idea of covering the extra costs of drilling a well or connecting to municipal water doesn’t feel fair to her.
“Basically, most of us have clean wells. We can’t get town water, but we’re going to be classified as not having clean water,” she said.
“It just feels like we shouldn’t be in this situation.”
