The slow, grinding work of making chemical manufacturers pay for contaminating New Hampshire’s water just produced another check. The state has collected a fresh settlement disbursement from a lawsuit against certain makers of PFAS chemicals, the latest installment in a recovery effort that is gradually channeling tens of millions of dollars toward the towns and water systems left to clean up the mess. For communities that have spent years and local tax dollars filtering these compounds out of their drinking water, every disbursement is a small measure of relief, and a reminder of how expensive the problem remains.
According to a report from the New Hampshire Bulletin, the latest payment totals $4.68 million, announced in a press release from New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella. The money will be deposited into the New Hampshire Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund, which provides grant and loan funding to public water systems for water source protection and PFAS mitigation. In plain terms, the dollars are aimed squarely at the infrastructure that keeps contaminated water out of people’s taps.
Where the money comes from
This particular payment comes from Tyco Fire Products, LP, and Chemguard, Inc. It is part of a $750 million nationwide class-action settlement approved by the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, where much of the country’s sprawling PFAS litigation has been consolidated. The defendants in that broader case include manufacturers of PFAS forever chemicals and of aqueous film-forming foam, a PFAS-containing material long used in firefighting. That foam is not an incidental detail in New Hampshire. Both the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and the 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, one of the most prominent contamination episodes in the state’s recent history.
PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a large family of synthetic compounds prized for their resistance to heat, water, and grease, and used for decades in everything from nonstick cookware to stain-resistant fabrics to firefighting foam. The same durability that made them useful makes them persistent in the environment and in the human body, which is why they have earned the forever chemicals nickname. Toxic, man-made PFAS compounds have been discovered in water supplies in towns across New Hampshire, turning what was once an obscure chemistry term into a kitchen-table concern for families worried about what is coming out of the faucet.
How the money reaches towns
The disbursement feeds into a larger pipeline of expected recoveries. New Hampshire anticipates seeing about $56 million or more in initial, phase one payments from settlements with 3M, DuPont, Tyco, and Chemguard. Of that total, roughly $45 million will be available to disburse to municipalities after attorneys’ fees and litigation costs are subtracted. The state has already received more than $34 million, according to figures from the Department of Justice and the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. The payments arrive in installments rather than a single lump sum, and the exact timing of future disbursements is not fully nailed down, which is part of why the state continues to announce them one tranche at a time.
The vehicle for distributing the money, the Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund, has a history worth understanding. It was first established with damages the state won in a 2016 lawsuit against ExxonMobil over groundwater contamination from methyl tert-butyl ether, or MtBE, a gasoline additive. That case seeded the fund with roughly $276 million, said fund administrator Cheryl Bondi, and that original sum has made up the bulk of the fund ever since. The advisory board that oversees it generally distributes about 20 percent of the fund each year to public water systems across the state through a mix of grants and loans. At its current pace, Bondi said, the fund is expected to last until at least 2043, though changes in how it is administered or new funding sources could shift that horizon in either direction.
Why it matters for Granite State communities
For a town wrestling with PFAS in its wells, the practical question is not the size of a national settlement but whether there is money available to install treatment, drill new sources, or extend clean water lines to affected homes. That is where the trust fund comes in, and why folding settlement dollars into it matters. Public water systems seeking support can find information through the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, which maintains a dedicated page on PFAS compensation for public water systems. The framework is designed so that recoveries from polluters cycle back into the exact projects that protect residents, rather than disappearing into general spending.
Attorney General Formella signaled that the state is not finished pursuing manufacturers. 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, he said in the release. That posture matters because the costs of contamination are ongoing. Towns like Merrimack have spent millions confronting PFAS, and the question of how settlement money is fairly apportioned among affected communities has been a live debate in New Hampshire for years.
The settlement money also arrives against a shifting federal backdrop. New Hampshire has been navigating changes in federal PFAS policy, including regulatory rollbacks that the Review examined in its reporting on the EPA’s retreat on drinking water standards. At the same time, local contamination fights have continued to play out, from the wastewater and river concerns detailed in the Review’s coverage of PFAS in the Merrimack River corridor to the State House debate over agricultural PFAS contamination and sludge use. The throughline across all of it is cost: someone has to pay to remove these chemicals from soil and water, and New Hampshire’s strategy has been to make the companies that profited from them shoulder as much of that bill as the courts will allow.
For now, another $4.68 million is in hand, headed toward the systems that deliver water to New Hampshire homes. It will not solve the PFAS problem on its own. But as the recoveries stack up toward that projected $45 million for municipalities, they represent a steady, if unglamorous, transfer of cleanup costs from local ratepayers back to the manufacturers, which is exactly what the litigation was built to do.
