KINGSBURY — Residents on Dean and Bardin roads are breathing a sigh of relief after tests found most of their wells are not contaminated with PFOA.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation went door to door last month and asked for permission to test every well near W. F. Lake Corp., a business in the Airport Industrial Park of Warren and Washington Counties.
Only one other well was contaminated, officials said Tuesday.
The first contaminated well tested at a PFOA level of 96 parts per trillion.
PFOA is considered a danger to human health at 70 parts per trillion.
DEC installed filter systems on both wells, at no cost to the homeowners.
Officials are in the process of testing five more wells, but the results so far seem to indicate that there is not a widespread drinking water contamination problem, they said.
If the company was unwilling, the state could still test the land, but the company is working with DEC, officials said.
The agency is still interested in testing wells.
In that case, St. Gobain Performance Plastics is located close to the village’s wells.

Representatives from Unicorn Management Consultants, which is overseeing the response to perfluorooctanoic acid contamination of the water system, said there have been no further talks with the owner of a potential well site that was under consideration late last year.
The report will look at long-term solution to address the PFOA contamination, which now is being eliminated by an enclosed carbon filtering system installed near the district well head off Route 346.
The idea was rejected by the board as inadequate.
Board members were especially critical of a plan to hand over to the district maintenance of the filtering system after three years.
Another potential issue with long-term filtering came up during the meeting Monday, when resident Jim Winchester brought in a blackened water filter element from a rental property he owns within the water district.
O’Connor said Monday there had been no further contact with the property owner.
The consultants earlier considered a well site on the former Green Mountain Race Track property, but negotiations with the owners to allow preliminary testing broke down.
Currently, the track property off Route 7 is involved in foreclosure proceedings in Bennington Superior Court Civil Division.
State requirements Tim Raymond, chief of the Operations and Engineering Section of the state’s Public Drinking Water Program, notified O’Connor in an email in February that the improvements to the filtering system initially proposed by Unicorn would not meet Vermont water supply standards.
If a new well option is not possible, Raymond stated, then the insurer funding the contamination response should "account for the full construction improvement costs for the provision of a permanent [filtering] system, including operation and maintenance life-cycle costs for the water system for the duration of time where the well will be impacted by PFOA and/or PFOS."

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HOOSICK FALLS, N.Y. (NEWS10) – A special meeting is being held on Tuesday to vote on a resolution regarding reimbursements for costs related to the PFOA contamination.
This is a big deal for the village as it has taken on hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs from this whole ordeal.
It’s been quite a process trying to get help.
Initially, the village had asked for more than $700,000 in reimbursements but the companies refused and came back with less than half that amount.
Still, the mayor is calling this an important first step on their long road to recovery.
So if they do in fact accept this money, it doesn’t end there.
If that space is too small for the turnout, the backup location will be the senior center on Church Street.
A local daycare provider is now facing charges after police say he had… Play Video Play Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Remaining Time -0:00 This is a modal window.
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DuPont chemical plant west of Parkersburg, West Virginia, and across the Ohio River from drinking water well fields for the Little Hocking Water Association in Ohio Wednesday on February 12, 2003.
[Craig Holman/Dispatch] Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has filed suit against chemical company DuPont, alleging it released toxic perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) or C8, for decades from its Washington Works plant on the Ohio River — despite knowing potential health and environmental risks.
A DuPont spokesperson declined to comment, saying the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit.
PFOA builds up and persists in blood as well as in soil and water, where it is resistant to regular environmental degradation.
DuPont used PFOA to manufacture Teflon products from the 1950s through 2013.
According to the state’s lawsuit, DuPont released the chemical from its Washington Works plant — located near Parkersburg, West Virginia — for decades.
We believe now, with the progression of science … we have a really strong case.” In February 2017, DuPont and its spinoff company Chemours agreed to pay nearly $671 million to settle 3,500 lawsuits filed in federal district courts over C8 contamination from its plant near Parkersburg.
Most of the lawsuits involved Mid-Ohio Valley residents who said they developed cancer and other ailments by drinking water contaminated with C8 dumped by DuPont in the Ohio River and spewed from its smokestacks.
“Litigation seems to be continuing,” he said.
”(Thursday’s) complaint reflects recognition by the state of Ohio that these particular materials present a risk and they should be addressed properly.” In January, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asked Chemours to test public and private drinking water supplies in communities along the Ohio River for a different chemical, GenX, also used to make products including Teflon, according to Bloomberg News.

The PFOA was traced back to the nearby Saint-Gobain Performance plant.
After the contamination was found, the state studied whether there was an increase in cancer rates in the area.
State epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan said more research needs to be done, but the report is good news for the people of Merrimack.
The data was compiled from the state’s cancer registry over a 10-year period ending in 2014, the last year that data is available.
The report looked at 26 different types of cancer and found that rates were not significantly different in Merrimack.
But Chan cautioned against reading too much into the report.
Chan said that while some studies have found links between PFOA and certain types of cancer, other studies have refuted those findings.
Despite the uncertain science, steps have been taken to connect homes with contaminated wells to the public water supply.
"Nobody wants to find these chemicals in their water, and so I think our Department of Environmental Services, along with the water company and community residents and town officials, are taking appropriate steps," he said.
"This is an ongoing response and situation in these communities where perfluorochemical contamination has been found, so we’re going to continue to work with town officials and community residents to address their concerns," he said.

Vermont environmental officials are reviewing a draft report submitted by company Saint-Gobain into soil and groundwater pollution found in Bennington.
WAMC’s Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Lucas Willard attended a meeting Tuesday night where officials provided details on next steps.
Almost two years since the chemical was first detected, the company is now under settlement agreement with the state to extend municipal drinking water to homes with contaminated wells.
“I’d say the water mains themselves have been probably extended to 40 or 50 percent of the area.
Because there’s…first you do the main and then you do the connections into the home,” said Hurd.
Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation Hazardous Site Manager John Schmeltzer said Tuesday night that the agency is reviewing the lengthy report.
A revised draft report will be issued next month, per the discussion between the State of Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, and will include more information regarding the groundwater conditions for Area 2.” PFAS compounds, like PFOA and PFOS, for example, are used in manufacturing insulating materials and firefighting foam.
PFOA was first linked to the former Chemfab facility in North Bennington, now owned by Saint-Gobain, and Vermont officials are also investigating other facilities in town.
“So the main difference is in the mass, the amount of PFOA that’s being deposited.
And the more that’s in the ground, the more gets in the groundwater, and the higher concentrations that’s in the wells.” Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources believes PFOA traveled through the air from emissions from facilities on Water Street and Northside Drive into Area 2.

A monitoring well on the southern border of the old sludge dump at 1855 House Street NE detected perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) at 44,000 parts-per-trillion (ppt), according to a Nov. 27 report by Wolverine’s contractor Rose & Westra GZA.
Test results show PFOS at 44k-ppt @WolverineWW’s House Street dump in Belmont: https://t.co/g8EZ3jMYga #PFAS pic.twitter.com/wIyHRSmA5Q — Garret M. Ellison (@garretellison) December 21, 2017 Notably, the PFOS level under the House Street landfill, where sludge from Wolverine’s tannery was dumped on a daily basis throughout the 1960s, is 7.5 times lower than the PFOS concentration underneath the former tannery site itself in downtown Rockford.
Discovery of PFAS in wells near House Street in April sparked a multi-township search for old Wolverine tannery waste dump sites, sampling of more than 1,000 residential wells so far, numerous meetings and anxiety among residents of northern Kent County.
The landfill sits on a ridge of high ground near the divide between the Rogue River and Grand River watersheds.
According to the report, "most of the groundwater at the site area is expected to flow southwest for a relatively short distance, approximately 1,000 to 2,000 feet, then flow southeast toward the Rogue River."
Monitoring wells are also being drilled near the river.
Most of those are planned in the House Street plume area, although some are planned in Algoma Township, where sludge believed to have been dumped in an old gravel pit that’s now a pond near Royal Hannah Drive NE has contaminated homes in the Wellington Ridge subdivision with PFAS levels as high as 10,000-ppt.
The contamination is "likely to reach" the Rogue River — where Wolverine began canvassing and supplying bottled water to homes on the east bank near Woodwater Drive NE this week.
"It sits on a mound on a divide where the chemicals can make their way a long distance.
You have river systems involved — it’s a complicated area to study."

Environmental officials are investigating New Zealand’s use of firefighting foam that contains banned chemicals.
The foam has already been found to have contaminated groundwater underneath the air force bases at Ohakea and Woodbourne.
Human bodies get rid of PFOA and PFOS from their systems much more slowly than other animal species.
It has been banned in firefighting standards in New Zealand since 2006 and hasn’t been used by the Defence Force since 2002.
That can happen after being consumed in water, or food produced with contaminated soil and water, or fish living in contaminated water.
The Defence Force has confirmed that soil and groundwater at Ohakea and Woodbourne airbases is contaminated above acceptable levels.
It is unclear why the level for milk is so much higher than for drinking water (70 parts per trillion).
What levels are okay?
New Zealand has adopted the Australian standards, which, for drinking water, is 70 parts per trillion for PFOS and 560 parts per trillion for PFOA.
Once removed, the levels in the blood decrease – studies have shown a 60 percent fall in four years.

One of them is GenX, a man-made compound that manufacturing facilities have discharged into North Carolina’s Cape Fear River for decades.
Mike Watters: 6 September of this year.
He had no inkling that his water might be contaminated until the company tested his well and told him it had an unsafe level of an unregulated chemical known as GenX.
And he’s not alone: residents of 115 homes within a few miles of the plant have been told their water is not safe to consume.
Hari Sreenivasan: Detlef Knappe, a professor of environmental engineering at North Carolina State, was part of the team who found GenX in downstream samples.
Hari Sreenivasan: The DEQ confronted the company in June, and Chemours agreed to stop discharging GenX into the Cape Fear River.
Hari Sreenivasan: The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s Sweeney treatment plant is about 80 miles downstream the Chemours plant.
Jim Flechtner, Executive Director, Cape Fear Public Water Utility Authority: It wasn’t necessarily designed to filter some of these compounds out because they’re not regulated at the national and state level.
Hari Sreenivasan: Meanwhile, residents downstream from the Chemours plant are grappling with the news that gen x and other fluorochemicals are in their drinking water.
Hari Sreenivasan: Two months ago there was another scare for downstream residents: a spill at the Chemours plant caused levels of GenX to spike to almost five times the state’s health goal of 140 parts per trillion.

On Dec. 13, Brinks and six Democrat co-sponsors introduced Michigan House Bill 5373, which would establish a state standard for PFAS in drinking water of 5-parts-per-trillion (ppt), which is 14 times lower than the Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory level of 70-ppt for two PFAS chemicals, PFOS and PFOA.
Brinks said the EPA 70-ppt advisory level — a non-regulatory limit that is not enforceable by law like a drinking water standard — isn’t as protective of public health as it ought to be.
"Maybe 5-ppt is not exactly the right number, but we need to start with sufficiently low number that were having a real conversation about actual health impacts with a specific level," she said.
A House Republican representing the Kent County area undergoing PFAS testing was more circumspect.
"Obviously, we rely on scientific evidence and the opinion of the EPA to give us direction in this matter and they have said 70-ppt — with an abundance of caution — is where it should be for drinking water," said Rep. Chris Afendoulis, R-East Grand Rapids.
The EPA advisory level may not be as health-protective as new research indicates it should be and doesn’t incorporate recent toxicology studies, say EWG scientists.
"The fastest route to ensure clean drinking water is state action, such as the legislation introduced by Rep. Brinks to set more stringent limits for PFOA and PFOS contamination of water," said Andrews.
"It is encouraging to see Michigan join other states — such as New Jersey and Vermont — that have set or proposed legal drinking water limits that provide greater assurance of safety than the federal health advisory levels."
At the Rockford townhall meeting, DHHS environmental health director Kory Groetsch said the health department uses the latest available science but said there’s still a lot to be learned about PFAS and how it affects humans.
The EPA level is "based on what we know now," Groetsch said.