LITTLETON — The Littleton Water District has filed a lawsuit in federal court against 16 companies operating in its vicinity to recoup the cost of PFAS monitoring and remediation in its water supply, which the water district says was contaminated by the companies.
In a statement from law firm Napoli Shkolnik, which is representing the LWD in this lawsuit, the firm said the legal action comes after the water district built out new treatment infrastructure to monitor and remediate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, from Littleton’s drinking water.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston on June 8, alleges that the 16 companies, primarily operating in Littleton and in neighboring Boxboro, contributed to the contamination of Littleton’s drinking water with PFAS substances through a shared septic system.
“Upon information and belief, Defendants utilized materials containing PFAS, and other substances that transform into PFAS, in their business operations, and who either tortiously or through ordinary operations used, released, stored, handled, and/or disposed of PFAS, including PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid), and materials containing these contaminants in such a manner that has caused PFAS to migrate into and exist in Littleton’s drinking water, thereby damaging and injuring Littleton,” the complaint says. “Defendants as the responsible parties, and not the Littleton Water District, its taxpayers, or its customers, should bear all past, present, and future costs of addressing the above presence and removal of PFAS from its drinking water supply.”
The defendants in the lawsuit include Jumbo Capital Management LLC, Invetech Inc., Setra Systems LLC, SynQor Inc., Amrize Northeast Inc., HP Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, NorthBridge Partners LLC, NBPII Littleton LLC, LML Littleton LLC, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc., 30 Porter LLC, Diamond Antenna and Microwave Corporation, Artemis Capital Partners III LP and 59P LLC.
The locations the companies do business in locally, where the lawsuit alleges the PFAS contamination originated from, include 149 Ayer Road, 151-153 Taylor St. and 30 and 59 Porter Road in Littleton, and 155 and 159 Swanson Road in Boxboro.
The defendant companies cover a wide range of industries and products, including power supply manufacturing, sensors and materials for the defense and aerospace industries, among others.
PFAS and related substances are a wide-ranging class of artificial chemical compounds that are known to not easily break down in the environment, and to cause various health complications when ingested over a long term. Such substances are often referred to as “forever chemicals,” due to their persistence in the environment and human body.
In the complaint, the LWD said the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection determined that Littleton’s water, which is supplied mainly through nine wells, are “located in aquifers with a high vulnerability to contamination due to the absence of hydrogeologic barriers, such as confining clay layers, that would otherwise impede contaminant migration.”
“This high susceptibility is exacerbated by the presence of numerous industrial, commercial, and transportation-related land uses within Littleton’s recharge areas, including facilities that manufacture, use, store, handle, release, or dispose of hazardous substances and PFAS-containing materials,” said the complaint.
The result, the complaint claims, is that PFAS and related substances “have exceeded, and in some instances continue to exceed, applicable federal and state drinking-water standards, including [the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency]’s Maximum Contaminant Levels of 4 ppt for PFOA and PFOS.”
To mitigate that contamination, Littleton has had to actively monitor its water for forever chemicals and construct treatment systems.
“Littleton has incurred millions of dollars in response costs to date and is expected to continue incurring millions more for decades,” said the complaint.
In a statement Monday, Littleton Electric Light and Water Departments General Manager Nick Lawler said the department’s “first obligation is to deliver safe, clean drinking water to the people of Littleton.”
“We have invested heavily in treatment and monitoring to address this contamination, and as a result our water is and has been safe to drink,” said Lawler. “But the costs of cleaning up this contamination belong with the companies whose operations caused it, not with our ratepayers.”
In a statement Monday, Napoli Shkolnik partner Paul Napoli referenced the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, otherwise known as CERCLA or the Superfund Law, which his firm said “enables the government and affected parties to respond to releases of hazardous substances and hold responsible parties financially liable for environmental contamination.”
“The cost of remediation should fall on those responsible for the contamination, not on Littleton’s residents and businesses,” said Napoli. “CERCLA exists so that the manufacturers and property owners who put these forever chemicals into the environment pay to clean them up, not the ratepayers left holding the bill. We intend to hold every responsible party at the Swanson Road site to account.”
The Sun reached out to a number of the defendant companies Monday, with the only response coming from a spokesperson for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
“We have not yet been served with the complaint. The site in question was a Compaq Computer facility acquired by the former Hewlett-Packard Company, which was split into two companies in 2015 creating HPE. Although HPE took ownership of the property in 2015, all HPE operations there ceased in 2016,” the HPE spokesperson said in an email Monday.
Hewlett Packard had previously owned the former Compaq facility at 151-153 Taylor St. in Littleton, which is now an Amazon warehouse. Amazon is not named in the lawsuit.
The prayer for relief in the lawsuit does not specify a dollar amount, but requests that the defendants “reimburse Littleton for its past, present, and future costs to investigate, monitor, evaluate, and remediate the PFAS that continues to migrate into Littleton’s public water supply, including the costs of employing outside consultants and testing labs for these tasks.”
Napoli Shkolnik is also representing Pepperell in a similar lawsuit filed earlier this year, in which the town sued six industrial giants for PFAS contamination of its drinking water and the associated cleanup costs.
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