More funding from PFAS settlements will be available for New Hampshire towns

New Hampshire has received another settlement disbursement from a lawsuit against certain makers of PFAS chemicals. 

The latest payment is $4.68 million, according to a press release from New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella. It will be deposited in the New Hampshire Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund, which supplies grant and loan funding to public water systems for water source protection and PFAS mitigation.

The payment, from Tyco Fire Products, LP, and Chemguard, Inc., is part of a $750 million nationwide class-action settlement approved by the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. The defendants include manufacturers of PFAS “forever chemicals” and aqueous film-forming foam, a PFAS-containing material used in firefighting.

New Hampshire expects to see about $56 million or more in initial, phase one payments from settlements with 3M, DuPont, Tyco, and Chemguard, of which $45 million will be available to disburse to municipalities after attorneys’ fees and litigation costs. The state so far has received over $34 million, according to the Department of Justice and the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. 

Toxic, man-made PFAS compounds have been discovered in water supplies in towns across New Hampshire. And the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency point to aqueous film-forming foam as a source of PFAS contamination at sites including the former Pease Air Force Base. 

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“The State will continue to seek full recovery for the damages caused by the manufacture and sale of PFAS and (aqueous film-forming foam) by the defendant companies,” Formella said in the release.

The New Hampshire Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund was first established with damages won by the state in a 2016 suit against ExxonMobil for groundwater contamination with the gasoline byproduct methyl tert-butyl ether, or MtBE. 

That provided about $276 million to start the fund, said Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund Administrator Cheryl Bondi in an interview this spring.

That initial sum has made up the bulk of the fund since then, Bondi said. The Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund Advisory Board generally distributes about 20% of the fund each year to public water systems across the state through a mixture of grants and loans, she said; the fund is currently expected to last until at least 2043, though changes to how it is administered, or future funding sources, could change that.

Information for public water systems seeking funding is available on the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services website.