Private wells in CT rarely get tested for water quality

The contamination of water wells is a silent, but dangerous, wide-spread, under-reported health problem in suburban and rural towns, as well as cities throughout the state, with everything from road deicer to so-called forever chemicals such as PFAS pouring out of the faucets of thousands of homes.

But Connecticut properties with private wells are rarely investigated for harmful chemicals, prompting lawmakers to consider a variety of tactics in this legislative session, from mandatory-testing programs during property sales, to curbing development near underground water supplies called aquifers, and even requiring the repair or replacement of well and pipe equipment, which can runs in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Possibly the biggest question: Who’s going to pay to clean up the water, which in recent years has been declared a public trust?

And it’s not just in bucolic areas of the state, where wintertime road preparations have invaded drinking wells, and arsenic from old fruit orchards has tainted water. The town of Greenwich has documented wellwater contamination from nearby Westchester County Airport, while Stamford recorded high arsenic levels in the northern part of that city. Urban neighborhoods near former manufacturing sites are also impacted.

And yet, there are no requirements for testing, even with at least one well in the upstate town of Tolland reporting sodium chloride contamination 600 times acceptable levels.

State health officials told the legislative Public Health Committee on Monday that many wells are tested for water quality only once, during initial home construction. But with more than 322,000 private wells providing drinking water to 800,000 state residents, the issue of water quality - and contamination - is looming large, particularly in towns when residents are now afraid to even give tap water to their pets, let alone drink it themselves.

“Many of these wells are old and have never been tested,” said Lori Mathieu, public health section chief in the state Department of Health, which calculated that there are about 10,000 property transfer a year, so if each transaction required water-quality testing, at least buyers would know what they are getting in the way of drinking-water quality.

“We’ve run into many situations where a treatment is needed or necessary and a homeowner who just purchased a home for hundreds of thousands of dollars did not realize what the water quality was or what the treatment needs are,” Mathieu said. “It provides better information so that the potential homeowner would be able to provide treatment for those wells or those different varying contaminants that are in the ground.” She said that in recent years, private wells have been a major issue in state water planning.

Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani told the committee that private and semi-private wells, many of which service local municipal buildings, are also of concern. “We’d like to see that potable water be provided for some of these areas as well.”

State Rep. Jaime Foster, D-Ellington, a member of the committee, and Rep. Tammy Nuccio, R-Tolland, who testified on legislation Monday, said that unsafe drinking water afflicts both their districts. Foster would like the state to get better at providing data on a streetby-street basis. Mathieu replied that the legislation being pursued by the agency includes better and more-accessible information.

“Are we going far enough?” Foster asked Juthani. “I think that this is going to be first steps that can help us get there,” Juthani replied, adding that there is about $40 million in federal loan funding available to test and clean up PFAS in 725 public water systems in the state over five years. “Not all are going to be eligible for this PFAS remediation money,” Juthani warned.

Nuccio said most residents in her district have wells and over the last 10 years, there has been an increase in drinking water contaminated with road salt, belying a 2007 state report that predicted such effects would dissipate the chemicals with spring and summer rains.

At least 68 wells in Nuccio’s district, which includes Ashford and Willington, are contaminated with sodium chloride, including one well with levels 600 times acceptable levels of the chemical, she said. Two-year-old appliances are failing in these homes, and pinhole leaks are developing in water pipes.

“Quite frankly, it’s not even safe to give to your dog, or boil water in,” Nuccio said, asking for financial aid for homeowners with contaminated wells. “We really need to remediate the environmental impact of putting these chemicals into our environment unchecked. There is a battle between who is responsible for this and who is going to pay to fix it.”

Landfills near private wells and public water sources will be main targets for cleaning PFAS, Mathieu said. Among the communities where state health and environmental officials have worked include Greenwich, Windsor, Ellington, East Hampton and Killingworth.

“Water is one of the most-essential parts of our survival, said state Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, a physician who is co-chairman of the Public Health Committee.

And on the day before World Water Day, Connecticut environmentalists Monday agreed that pervasive groundwater contamination is going to be tough to solve.

“We live with significant non-compliance issues that contribute to poor water quality,” said Sharon Lewis of Hartford, executive director of the Connecticut

Coalition for Economic and. Environmental Justice. “Eliminating exposure, in the first place, would be a first step. People in (environmental justice) communities are exposed to all types of contaminants that leak into the groundwater.”

“Essentially, the goal is to stop putting stuff in the groundwater in the first place,” Bill Lucey, the Long Island Soundkeeper, who appeared with Lewis and other state environmental activists in a noontime webinar. “That’s from nutrients, road salts, all the different toxins, lead, mercury, PFAS.” Lucey said the water in his son’s grammar school in rural Killingworth has been contaminated with PFAS: Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances shown to be harmful to public health.

“We’ve got to stop poisoning our water,” said Lucey, stressing that an obvious place to start is eliminating fertilizer from suburban lawns. “Grass doesn’t feed us. It’s just simply an aesthetic that we want to have. We’re polluting our groundwater just so something looks nice in our front yard.”

Another bill pending in the legislative Environment Committee would limit the use of road salt.

“Road salt is a very tricky one, because you’re balancing safety with water quality issues,” Lucey said. “People who have drinking water wells that are near where the salt applications are occurring, it’s eating away the casings of the wells; it’s getting into the well water itself, it’s destroying the piping. It’s not an easy problem to solve.”