Chatham Receives Update On Measures To Protect Drinking Water

Dr. Robert Duncanson

CHATHAM – At a recent meeting by the Chatham Select Board, the town received an update on two articles related to PFAS contamination in the town’s public water supply wells that were passed unanimously during Town meeting.

The first article gave clearance to finish the construction on wells 10 and 11, whose construction was previously put on hiatus due to the detection of gasoline additive MTBE in the towns water supply.

The second article set aside $1.4 million to design a treatment facility to deal with iron, manganese and PFAS removal in town wells five and eight.

A second component of that article was to procure the granular activated carbon vessels which are designed specifically for the removal of PFAS.

“Right now they have a five to six month lead time from the time an order was placed,” said Dr. Robert Duncanson, Director of Natural Resources.

“So the funding was secured to get that order placed, which was done shortly after town meeting concluded with the hope of getting those vessels in place on a temporary basis by April of 2022, so before next summer season,” he said.

Duncanson said that the town is moving forward to install the vessels and hopes to complete the treatment facility in the span of a year to eighteen months, with an estimated time of three years to get the facility up and running.

Moving forward, the town is working on a PFAS source assessment study to come up with a standardized scope of services to survey the prevalence of the chemicals.

“Now we have to tighten up the scope a little bit and send it back out to these companies and hopefully get something back that we can compare easily instead of what is right now a really broad scope, so that is also in the works,” said Duncanson.

During the past summer, the Town had to shut down some of its wells in the middle of a mild drought due to the detection of PFAS above recommended levels.

By, Matthew Tomlinson, CapeCod.com NewsCenter

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