Two blue tanks, like magnified pill capsules or a pair of lungs, joined by plumbing instead of a windpipe, signalled a new chapter for the Lochmere Village District when they arrived last year.
Operations manager Adam Boynton said the small water system in Tilton would not have been able to afford the turnkey package, called an ion-exchange resin water filter, on its own. Instead, the money had come from the state: $1.425 million, the remainder of which Boynton put towards replacing ancillary equipment.
In addition to the filter, the district replumbed its pump house and upgraded its pre-filtration system to better remove sediment before it enters the new resin tanks. “You don’t want to put a Ferrari engine in a Pinto,” Boynton said.
His system, which serves only 275 metered connections, some of which are apartment buildings and campgrounds with several dozen residents and seasonal guests, had spent the last two and a half years mailing customers quarterly notifications that the water streaming from their faucets and bathtubs violated the state’s maximum contamination levels for PFAS.
Routine sampling as late as March 2025 showed Lochmere exceeding standards for three of the four compounds regulated by the state. Boynton said he doesn’t know the origin of these contaminants, part of an expansive class of manmade “forever chemicals” known to increase cancer risk, suppress the immune system and contribute to some reproductive health issues. But by June, once the new filtration system had been installed, these had been successfully reduced to undetectable levels.
“We don’t know where it comes from. The well field is a little peninsula out on the lake, and there’s no PFAS there. Maybe it’s in the fill they brought in to make the well field, or the runoff within the water table in the area; we’re not really sure,” Boynton said. “Sometimes it’s easier just to fix the problem.”
In recent years, the state of New Hampshire has benefitted from a number of payouts settling contamination-related lawsuits against PFAS manufacturers and polluters including 3M, DuPont, Tyco and BASF, settlements that have returned more than $43 million to the state’s Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund. Initially established following exhaustive litigation against ExxonMobil Corp., when the state won $277 million in restitution for contamination of a different dangerous chemical, methyl-tertiary butyl ether, or MtBE, the trust funnels dollars to various programs overseen by the New Hampshire Drinking Water and Groundwater Advisory Commission.
One such program, formed to administer settlement funds, is the PFAS Compensation Fund to Public Water Systems Program. Although the program has only existed since November 2025, municipalities have worked with the Department of Environmental Services to remedy PFAS contamination virtually since the state adopted enforceable standards in 2019.
In some parts of the capital region, difficult-to-stomach costs and persistent bureaucratic hurdles have snarled efforts to remediate PFAS contamination. Moreover, as public water systems like Lochmere have come to learn, contamination, although invisible to the naked eye, is like a hedge in need of watchful pruning.
Boynton is beginning this quarter to test the ion exchange resin filter for any “breakthrough” of PFAS contamination that would indicate a need to replace a vessel of resin. His estimates say the district will need to purchase a replacement every 18 months. So far, he’s been quoted $20k on the low end and $35k on the high.
In May, DES issued a report recommending that the state develop a financial assistance program to offset the cost of operating and maintaining PFAS treatment systems, costs that “are unanticipated and a burden on many water systems and municipalities,” the Department said. In the meantime, systems and their ratepayers will shoulder these costs.
“We own this infrastructure now, we are financially responsible to maintain and uphold it. We’re budgeting now every year a piece of our total budget for ion exchange resin replacement,” Boynton said.
Since May, residents of Pembroke, Allenstown and some homes in Hooksett to the southeast have entered the newest phase of PFAS mitigation: On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, residents of odd-numbered houses are free to irrigate their lawns. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays are reserved for those living in even-numbered homes.
Meanwhile, Sunday has become a legally enforceable day of rest, giving the Pembroke Water Works’ three drinking-water wells “the extra day they need to refresh,” Board Chairman Kevin Brasley wrote in an announcement.
Violators face increasing penalties, including, on the third strike, disconnection of service.
By the time the system imposed these restrictions, it had already been approved to receive $1,035,634 of settlement funding from DES. At Lochmere Village District, minuscule by comparison, such a sum would cover the needed filtration upgrade with money to spare. But for more than a year, Pembroke has stared down the barrel of multiple-million-dollar estimates and reached a very different conclusion about its path forward.
Purchasing filtration systems would be even costlier than taking out a $10.4 million bond to install a physical connection to a different water system, a report presented to voters at town meeting last year indicated. The money would be borrowed from DES, the water from Concord.
This would all be contingent on the approval of the Concord City Council, which hasn’t yet heard the matter.
“Pembroke has been in contact with Concord through various meetings, letters, emails and phone conversations. All those discussions have been positive; however, the final decisions need to be made by the City Council,” Water Works Superintendent Matt Gagne said in a written statement. “The physical interconnection is simple. The problem is that Concord has to decide if they want to give up a valuable resource to help a neighboring community.”
When the state first established maximum contamination levels, many small utilities detected contamination, but not Concord, explained Deputy Director of General Services Marco Philippon.
Philippon previously served a 12-year tenure as the city’s Superintendent of Water, watching numerous surrounding communities come to grips with their new realities, some looking to Concord and its protected water source, Penacook Lake, for reprieve. Bow approached the city about tapping into Concord’s water to help bypass contamination in Bow Junction. Epsom Village Water District hoped to explore the same solution — extending a water main from Concord — but the costs proved to be prohibitive.
“It’s a case-by-case engineering question,” Philippon said.
Pembroke would be different, feasible. Concord’s water main ends near the municipal airport, at the three-way intersection of Integra Drive, Manchester Street and Airport Road. Pembroke’s contaminated well station is located on the opposite side of the Soucook River, just a quarter- to a half-mile away, by Philippon’s estimate.
The short water main extension would require the pipeline construction itself and modifying the well pumping station into a booster station, as well as a “source development fee,” as the Water Works continued to buy capacity from Concord.
But apart from two connections extended beyond the city’s political boundaries in the 70s and 80s, a mutual aid connection to Boscawen and a line servicing a few homes along a contamination site on Hall Street in Bow, the city has never approved another extension, according to Philippon. Concord has spent years insulating Penacook Lake from contamination. A 2,500-acre buffer surrounds it, about 1,000 of which the city owns. The remaining land belongs to the state Department of Corrections and individual homeowners, but the city has long imposed zoning restrictions to prevent livestock farming and multi-unit developments that could disrupt the delicate ecological balance.
“Concord has a water system that was built and constructed by ratepayers of the city: 10 million gallons per day, and that’s an investment paid for by ratepayers,” Philippon said. “That’s where we’re at — they have requested help and the city of Concord would need to put that on the agenda.”
In Epsom, another hurdle had thwarted the town’s progress on PFAS remediation: Short-staffed with only one commissioner, the Epsom Village Water District cannot reach the quorum it needs to even initiate the first stages of its project. It cannot meet with an engineering firm or sign off on plans.
A path forward will be discussed at a public meeting on Monday, Sept. 21.
In the staggering sums and concerted coordination that can be required to carry out remediation projects, Boynton, the operations manager in Tilton, said, clean water and the issue of PFAS contamination become unignorable, even if customers aren’t necessarily drinking directly from the tap.
“Clean water is in the background, like how people see the power cables for electricity, but it’s something they take for granted,” he said.
