Photo credit: PAT GREENHOUSE/GLOBE STAFF
Last Thursday’s Boston Globe featured a Letter to the Editor by Foundation President and CEO Amie Shei, Ph.D. highlighting long-standing inequities in drinking water protections across the state. Responding to an earlier Boston Globe article about the City of Cambridge’s municipal water supply and how Cambridge residents were able to switch to a safe public drinking water source while the municipal water supply was treated for PFAS (“forever chemicals”), Dr. Shei noted that private well owners cannot switch to another water supply, nor do they have access to financial assistance to remediate contaminated private wells.
Massachusetts residents who live in urban areas generally have access to public water systems that are routinely monitored and treated if contaminants are discovered. In contrast, residents who live in rural areas typically rely on private wells which are not subject to any minimum statewide standards or regulations. As a result, many rural residents are at risk of drinking contaminated water. Recent evidence demonstrates that many private wells are in fact contaminated. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s Private Wells PFAS Sampling Program found that about 5 percent of private wells tested across 85 towns had six PFAS chemicals above the state’s public drinking water standards. In addition, the Foundation’s Private Well Program to Protect Public Health Round 5 Synergy Initiative project with RCAP Solutions has sampled over 240 private wells across the state and found that on average about 30 percent of private wells tested in 12 towns across the state had contaminants exceeding the state’s public drinking water standards. An estimated 500,000 Massachusetts residents rely on private wells for drinking water.
The Foundation has invested over $1 million to date in the Private Well Program to Protect Public Health and continues to advocate for systemic changes to strengthen protections and financial assistance for private well owners to ensure that all Massachusetts residents have access to safe drinking water regardless of where they live.
