A Maine town that has some of the worst forever chemicals contamination in the country will continue to need broader testing of soil and drinking water at a time when state funding is dwindling, a new report from a town committee found.
The committee’s report to the Fairfield town council said the $25 million in the state’s program for tests and filters, which can cost up to $5,300 annually, could run out as soon as two years from now, shifting the financial burden to residents. It could be too costly for them, the report said, and, if the filter systems aren’t maintained, they could pose health risks.
“Funding is the biggest issue,” said Matthew Townsend, chair of Fairfield’s seven-member PFAS committee, which was set up in April 2023. “There’s a lot of finger-pointing on who should pay to remediate the contamination. We don’t want funding coming from local tax money.”
The committee planned to submit the 84-page report to the town council on Wednesday to bring it up to speed on the current state of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, contamination in Fairfield. It stopped short of making recommendations for specific remediation. It said another committee should be formed to continue the work and that Maine’s state and federal legislative delegations should make getting more funding for Fairfield a priority given the severe contamination in the town.
The current committee was tasked with assessing the continuing need for more water and soil testing and to provide a network of testing sites. It also investigated possible sustainable uses for contaminated property and looked into long-term planning to make sure residents have clean water.
The man-made PFAS chemicals got into private wells mostly from sludge spread on farmland, a practice that became popular in the 1980s and that the state banned in April 2022.
Some 380 residences in the Somerset County town have been tested, with 149 private wells having more than 20 parts per trillion of PFAS in them, according to the report. Maine currently allows a maximum of 20 parts per trillion of six combined PFAS chemicals in drinking water, but a new federal standard set last April reduces that to 4 parts per trillion. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection estimates there are 110 more private wells in Fairfield that would need treatment at the federal limits.
State municipal water districts must meet the federal standard by 2029. As fears mount that the White House will roll back the stricter safe-drinking levels, a Maine legislator said he plans to introduce a bill soon that would require the state to meet current federal limits even if the federal government pulls them back. Lawmakers in California recently proposed a similar bill.
Fairfield might be able to tap the federal money associated with the new limits if the Kennebec Water District expands the municipal water system to neighborhoods where private wells are contaminated. More than $1 billion in federal money is targeted at helping states and municipalities remediate water systems with higher than allowable PFAS counts.
China Lake, which supplies Fairfield’s municipal water, currently is under the state PFAS limit but over the federal limit, so it also might qualify for federal grants, said Fairfield Town Manager Michelle Flewelling. She said she attended all 13 of the PFAS committee’s meetings over the past year.
The question is whether the town will support expanding the Kennebec Water District. Residents rejected the expansion in June 2022, Flewelling said.
“We were working with everybody that was out there to get funding from all possible sources so we could make a portion of the plan happen, and then when the town voted no, everything stopped,” Flewelling said. “The town council didn’t even discuss PFAS contamination until it created this committee.”
Flewelling doesn’t expect the town council to take any actions on the report on Wednesday, but she expects the committee to come back in 30 days with recommendations for next steps.
Lori Valigra reports on the environment for the BDN’s Maine Focus investigative team. Reach her at lvaligra@bangordailynews.com. Support for this reporting is provided by the Unity Foundation, a fund at the Maine Community Foundation and donations by BDN readers.