Residents whose private wells tested positive for PFAS chemicals told the Tiverton Town Council on July 27 that neither the town nor the state told them quickly enough, and a state official acknowledged he is "not in the slightest" confident that everyone in the affected area has been notified.
The exchange came during a public comment period that the council moved up on its agenda so that residents could question two officials from the state environmental agency, who had originally come to present on a separate marina project. The account below is drawn from the Tiverton Town Council's published meeting recording.
What residents said
A resident who lives near Crandall Road described receiving a state letter in April asking permission to sample her well, and said a sample was collected May 26. She said she later got a voicemail from a state staffer telling her the well was contaminated and that she should stop drinking the water, brushing her teeth with it, or cooking with it. She said she asked whether she could boil it and was told no, because boiling concentrates the chemicals.
Local sponsorAffordable photography lessons in Newport, Jamestown, or your town.E.L. Photo RIThe same resident told the council that her first husband died of liver cancer in 2008 at age 37, and that liver cancer appears among the health effects associated with PFAS exposure. She said four of the five houses on her street have had a death from cancer. "I don't know if there's a connection," she said, but described starting to "connect dots." She said she was told the state notified the town the week of June 16, and that she then waited for some communication from the town that never came.
"I kept checking the town website. Nothing. No emergency alert about well contamination and making sure you get tested," she said. She said one emergency alert did go out during that period, but it was a boil-water order for residents on public water — an instruction she and her neighbors could not follow.
A second resident, the mother of a child who died of leukemia, told the council she first contacted the state agency on June 15 and was told the town would be contacted immediately after that call. She said that by July 16 she had heard nothing further, which prompted her to post about the contamination on a local Facebook group. "My town of Tiverton, which is supposed to keep us safe, has failed us miserably," she said. "You allowed your residents to continue drinking and cooking with water that was possibly contaminated."
She asked the council directly how confident it was that everyone in the contaminated area had been notified. The answer from the table was: "Not in the slightest."
She pressed further, asking why a letter had not simply been mailed to that end of town. "The elderly are on Facebook. The elderly are on computers. My parents didn't know this was going on," she said. "Do you need money for postage? I'll give you a donation."
The state's account of the timeline
PFAS, sometimes called "forever chemicals," are a class of thousands of synthetic compounds used in nonstick and water-repellent products and, historically, in firefighting foam. A state official told the council that the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a law in 2022 setting drinking-water standards for six PFAS compounds and directing a statewide study of potential contamination sources. That study, published in 2023 with Brown University and the state health agency, screened 160 fire stations statewide and prioritized those where surrounding homes rely on private wells.
The official said sampling in Tiverton began in mid-May, results came back in mid-June, and staff then began notifying individual homeowners before anything was made public. He described that as a deliberate sequence: "You want to let people know what's going on in their house before it becomes public on a broader level."
He was careful to say the fire station is only a suspected source. "We don't know if something's a source, an actual source, until we get data on that site," he said. "Even in this case, we don't have any data on the fire station."
The town administrator laid out a parallel timeline, saying a small public water system serving a church on Crandall Road was tested in May, that results took several weeks, and that state staff then began contacting nearby residents in June. He said the first meeting on the issue was July 1, and that he has spoken with state staff weekly or daily since.
Later in the meeting, the administrator returned to the criticism without disputing it. "Communication is not what is spoken; it's how it's received," he said, "and clearly we can do a better job in communicating with our residents."
What the state is offering, and what it is not
Two remedies were described. In the short term, the state says it will pay for point-of-use treatment systems for any homeowner whose well exceeds the standard and who wants one, and has begun pre-installation evaluations at some homes. In the long term, the state is pursuing funding to extend public water lines.
Because water in Tiverton is supplied by two fire districts rather than the town, the state official said funding would flow to those districts. Asked whether the town would be expected to pay, he said: "No, no, no. There's no expectation that the town pays for any of this."
He said he could not yet say how long a water-line extension would take or how many homes it would serve.
The resident who spoke first said her treatment system was installed the Thursday before the meeting, but that she is still not drinking the water. "I don't know if it's working. They took a sample. I don't know when the test result will come to say my water is good to drink. I'm scared."
Testing costs and turnaround
Two practical questions went partly unanswered.
On cost, a councilor said he had heard a resident spent almost $700 to test a well outside the study area. The state official said he had heard the figure was around $200 but added, "that might be wrong," and referred the question to the state health agency, which runs the lab. A resident later confirmed the PFAS test itself is $200, and said her higher bill reflected additional tests bundled in. "There are some people that can't afford that," she said.
The state official warned residents to check with staff before paying a lab directly. "You can go into a laboratory and ask, 'What can I get for this?' And they say, 'Well, how much do you have?'" he said. "Really work with the Health Department and my team... so nobody gets taken for a ride."
On turnaround, a councilor asked whether the roughly one-month wait for results could be shortened. The state official said the delay is a lab capacity issue and that results must be validated for accuracy. Another councilor pressed harder, noting the health agency expedited testing during COVID and that residents are waiting on results now. "This seems to me to be a little bit more of an emergency than the state's treating it," a councilor said. The official responded that he would raise it with the health agency the following day.
Scope of the contamination is still open
Several people questioned whether the testing area is drawn too narrowly. The state official said his staff received about 33 sampling requests over one weekend and roughly 50 in a week, and is reviewing each for proximity to a suspected source. "We don't have enough money to sample everybody's well," he said, "but we do have a substantial amount of money to take care of the people who we think are near a suspected source."
Residents and council members raised other possible sources, including junkyards, an old landfill, and industrial sites. One resident who lives on the town's largest pond warned that contamination reaching that pond would affect far more households. Another asked the state to build a three-dimensional map accounting for well depth, not just distance.
The council president noted that residents outside the study area have paid for their own tests and gotten positive results. The state official said depth matters and that his staff can assess it, but that he did not have that data on hand.
One resident who tested her own well outside the area said she got a clean result three weeks later. She had been giving that water to four grandchildren daily for four years.
Another resident volunteered to canvass door to door with printed PFAS information, offering hours on multiple weekdays.
What happens next
The state official said a public meeting will be scheduled bringing together his agency's technical staff and the state health agency to answer property-specific questions, and that it will be set up "in the very near future." No date was given at the meeting.
The town administrator said he had another meeting scheduled with state agencies, the health agency and the water department for the Wednesday after the council meeting, with the town solicitor present.
Residents with questions were directed to call the state environmental agency at 401-222-7746 and ask for the staffer leading the project. The council also discussed sending a mailed notice to residents further out on Crandall Road so they can decide whether to test; no vote was taken on that at the meeting.
Bottled water and a public drinking water source at a town fire station were described as available, and the administrator said the state is working on an emergency purchase order to supply additional bottled water. That contract, the state official said, is not yet in place.