Setting
State Home Rep. Nancy Murphy, a Democrat from Merrimack, stated residents will proceed to pay an enormous value after the plant closes.
MERRIMACK, N.H. (AP) — A French firm that has been blamed for contaminating ingesting water in some New Hampshire communities with a bunch of chemical substances referred to as PFAS stated Wednesday it plans to shut its plant there and can work with the state on an ongoing environmental investigation.
Saint-Gobain Efficiency Plastics stated in an announcement that it’s going to “restructure its composite options enterprise in the US,” after evaluating the corporate’s enterprise objectives and what “is in step with the corporate’s mission and plan.”
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The Paris-based firm, which purchased the Merrimack plant from ChemFAB in 2000, initially believed it wasn’t discharging something dangerous. However the state stated that modified in 2004 after the corporate put in extra subtle know-how. After the corporate alerted the state, the state Division of Environmental Companies decided Saint-Gobain was exceeding state air limits for PFAS, and the corporate agreed to considerably cut back emissions.
PFAS is an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Generally known as “perpetually chemical substances,” they’re widespread, harmful and costly to take away from water. In addition they don’t degrade within the surroundings and are linked to well being points that embrace low birthweight and kidney most cancers.
The state didn’t transfer to do any groundwater testing till 2016 as a result of there was no indication on the time that the emissions posed a menace to groundwater. That got here to mild after wells close to Saint-Gobain services in Hoosick Falls, New York, had been discovered to be contaminated with PFOA — or perfluorooctanoic acid, essentially the most generally recognized of PFAS. Wells in Bennington and North Bennington, Vermont, additionally had been discovered to be contaminated with PFOA across the firm’s now-closed plant in Bennington. The contamination led to no less than two class motion lawsuits towards Saint-Gobain.
In 2019, the state lowered the usual for PFOA from 70 elements per trillion to 12 elements per trillion and launched an intensive nicely sampling program. It recognized 1,000 properties with contaminated water and decided the contamination was brought on by emissions from the Merrimack plant.
Final yr, Saint-Gobain agreed to offer bottled ingesting water and “everlasting alternate water, as applicable” to the properties in Bedford, Hudson, Litchfield, Londonderry and Merrimack. It additionally supplied a framework ought to extra properties be impacted.
There are 164 employees on the Merrimack plant. Saint-Gobain stated various roles and relocation help might be supplied to eligible staff who want to stay with the corporate, and assist packages might be made accessible to those that won’t proceed.
State Home Rep. Nancy Murphy, a Democrat from Merrimack, stated residents will proceed to pay an enormous value after the plant closes.
“Past the prices borne by personal nicely homeowners exterior a far too small ‘consent decree space’, we have now paid to filter the ingesting water in our houses; we have now paid to filter the general public wells in our city; we have now paid to filter the ingesting water in our colleges … and we’re paying for the contamination of our air, water, and soil with our compromised well being,” she stated in a an announcement.
