Contamination found at two more homes in Hinesburg

High levels of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — have been found in the drinking water of two more residential homes near the town’s landfill on Observatory Road in Hinesburg, town officials said.

A shallow dug well serving two residential properties on Forests Edge and Beecher Hill roads was found to have a PFAs rate above the state’s 20 parts per trillion, which is considered an acceptable level, town officials said.

The new discovery comes about a year and half after two wells in the same area, serving the town garage and another private residence on Forests Edge Road, were found in July 2021 to have high levels of methtylene chloride and PFAS — both carcinogens. The latter has been linked human endocrine disruption and kidney and testicular cancer.

“We really need to look at what we’re going to do here,” selectboard member Dennis Place said at the town’s Jan. 18 meeting, suggesting the town reach out to the state or Gov. Phil Scott’s office for assistance. “People are getting very nervous. It’s really serious — it’s people’s health and the values of their homes.”

The town, since the detection this month, has been providing the two residential homes with drinking water and will continue to do so until water treatment systems are installed, Joy Dubin Grossman, the assistant town manager, said.

The point-of-entry treatment systems, or POET systems, will cost the city roughly $11,000 to install and maintain on both property’s water lines, she said. Each system will cost the town anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 to maintain, but it is unclear when those will be installed.

The town paid similar amounts for those systems on the town garage and the other residential home last year.

Hinesburg paid Stone Environmental $21,425 in May to conduct monitoring of drinking water, and well and surface water testing at the site to monitor for PFAS, toxic metals including arsenic, cadmium and chromium, and other potentially dangerous substances.

While neither the town nor the state can definitively confirm the source of the contamination, it very likely originated from the closed landfill on Observatory Road, just north of the contaminated wells, state officials have said previously.

The landfill was capped in 1992 with a chemical-resistant plastic sheet sealed to contain contaminants. But a development proposal for the nearby area, as well as a proposal to install solar panels on top of the landfill in 2019, eventually led officials to discover that the landfill was never procedurally closed.

Paperwork for that testing ended up missing — both on the state and town’s end, officials have said. That’s when, as the state was conducting tests into its closure, contaminated drinking water at the well serving the town garage was discovered in the summer of 2021.

Given the proximity of the three contaminated wells to the landfill, questions have arisen concerning other properties in the area. There are several private wells serving residential properties on Forests Edge Road, as well as properties to the west of North Road — south of the landfill.

It is unclear whether the state conducted well or drinking water testing in the surrounding vicinity after the new PFAS discovery.

The Citizen reported in September 2021 that the state had tested water for at least four other homes on Forests Edge and Beecher Hill roads and found that water safe for drinking. An email to a state official involved with the testing was not immediately returned.