The state of Vermont is offering well testing, free water and other support for South Bennington and Shaftsbury in the wake of research last year that found PFAS contamination in the Bennington area has spread and worsened over time.
The state is also in active negotiations with the current corporate owner of the now shuttered ChemFab factory in Bennington, which produced Teflon-coated fiberglass fabrics, containing PFOA, perfluorooctanoic acid.
PFOA is a specific type of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are a group of thousands of synthetic, toxic compounds that can be found in common items like cookware and sports gear. Unsafe levels of PFOA have been found in a great swath of private wells in the Bennington area.
South Bennington and Shaftsbury residents are looking into the possibility of legal redress, and the town of Shaftsbury wants the state to go further and provide blood testing after toxic chemical exposure.
PFOA was recently detected in wells in South Bennington and southeast Shaftsbury, meaning the plume of contamination has spread past the initial area of concern. The PFOA continues to steadily seep into the soil, and groundwater contamination levels have by and large continued to rise in the Bennington area, according to last year’s research, conducted by Bennington College professors and student researchers in partnership with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
According to the research, around three quarters of the private wells tested between 2016 and 2024 saw increased levels of PFAS in the eight-year time period.
Residents in the Bennington region are still dealing with the consequences of these manmade chemicals leaching into the groundwater nearly a quarter century later, said David Bond, a Bennington College professor and one of the research leads on the project.
“PFAS is a generational disaster, and we’re only now starting to figure out what it means to respond to an environmental crisis of this scale and this durability,” Bond said.
State well sampling
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is currently collecting private well water samples for households within the newly identified area of contamination, said Richard Spiese, a hazardous site manager with the department.
The state has identified around 250 wells in South Bennington and 50 wells in Shaftsbury in need of testing, but not all households have responded to state outreach, Spiese said.
In late January, the state narrowed the allowable level of PFOA in the state’s Groundwater Protection Rule to four parts per trillion, said Ben Montross, the department’s drinking water program manager. The state found private wells in South Bennington and in Shaftsbury with PFOA levels as high as around 60 parts per trillion, 15 times the allowable limit. Most impacted wells were between 20 and 30 parts per trillion, although no PFOA was detected in almost half the tested wells, wrote Spiese in an email.
In the new area of concern, Spiese said the state is giving out bottled water or setting up filtration systems for homes with above the state’s new standard for contaminated drinking water.
Spiese said there are plans underway to connect the Southshire neighborhood to municipal water, and the ultimate goal is to connect all affected communities to public water that does not have PFAS contamination.
Settlements
A French multinational company called Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corporation bought the ChemFab factory in Bennington before it shut down in 2002. The state of Vermont entered a settlement with Saint-Gobain in 2019, in which the corporation agreed to provide the bulk of funding necessary to connect Bennington households to municipal drinking water sourced from Morgan Springs.
Attorney General Charity Clark wrote in a statement that the Agency of Natural Resources requested that Saint-Gobain conduct additional work in the new areas of contamination concern, but current settlement negotiations with the corporation are confidential.
“Discussions are ongoing and we hope to reach a positive outcome,” Clark wrote in the statement.
In the meantime, lawyers Stephen Schwarz and David Silver also gathered around 100 residents in South Bennington and southeast Shaftsbury, whose private wells lie in the new zone of contamination concern, to discuss the process for filing a class action lawsuit, as first reported by the Bennington Banner.
Silver represented Bennington residents who received $34 million in financial compensation and medical monitoring support from Saint Gobain after a class action settlement in 2022.
Schwarz successfully litigated class action lawsuits on behalf of residents of Hoosick Falls, New York, due to PFOA water contamination. Under separate settlements, the companies Saint-Gobain, Honeywell International and Dupont agreed to pay out a total of over $90 million to Hoosick Falls residents for financial compensation and a medical monitoring program, according to recent reporting by The Times Union.
Subsequent to the Bennington settlement, Silver said in an interview that the Vermont Legislature passed a medical monitoring bill in 2022, which codified Vermonters’ right to sue corporations for the cost of medical monitoring after toxic chemical exposure.
What about blood testing?
Blood test results were helpful in previous settlements to argue that corporations are liable for exposure and should pay for citizens’ medical monitoring, Schwarz said in an interview. Blood tests are expensive and not readily available, he added, but are valuable in assessment of health risk factors like cancer for those exposed to PFOA.
The town of Shaftsbury is currently petitioning the state for free blood testing, which was provided for Bennington and North Bennington residents in 2016. In March, the state denied the town of Shaftsbury’s request, asserting the state does not provide blood testing now.
“PFAS is present in the blood of nearly all Americans, and a blood test cannot determine whether PFAS exposure will cause health problems, whether a condition was caused by PFAS, or how exposure occurred,” wrote Julie Moore, the secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources.
On April 21, the town of Shaftsbury Select Board members sent a letter back stating that the state’s reasoning is not aligned with scientific understanding of the risks of PFOA in the bloodstream.
The town noted that the Environmental Protection Agency considers PFOA a probable human carcinogen. The agency is currently rolling back Biden-area limits on PFAS levels in drinking water, according to reporting this month from the Associated Press.
The International Agency For Research on Cancer considers PFOA a human carcinogen, primarily due to sufficient evidence that the chemical potentially causes kidney cancer, the town wrote in the letter.
“There is no scientific, logical or fair reason to treat Shaftsbury residents any differently than Bennington residents with respect to state funded blood testing,” wrote the Shaftsbury Select Board members in the April letter.
The Vermont Department of Health understands the community’s concerns, wrote spokesperson Kyle Casteel, but blood tests for PFOA levels are available through individual healthcare providers. The state previously supported testing in 2016 to study and establish the link between concentrations of PFOA in blood and exposure of PFOA in drinking water for affected communities, Casteel wrote in an emailed statement.
“We continue to work with health care providers and the public to communicate about the risks of PFOA/PFAS exposure and support mitigation of those risks,” wrote Casteel.
