Subscribe To Our Newsletter
Subscribe To Our Newsletter
New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella announced that the state has officially received a $1.815 million settlement payment from BASF Corporation.
This payout is part of New Hampshire’s active, multi-front legal campaign against chemical manufacturers that produced and distributed PFAS-laden firefighting foams, which ultimately seeped into municipal aquifers and public water systems.
The $1.815 million payment represents New Hampshire’s initial Phase 1 Action Fund payout from a massive $316.5 million nationwide class action settlement. The nationwide deal was approved by the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina as part of a sweeping, multi-district litigation (MDL) focused on water systems contaminated by Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF). By asserting claims on behalf of all eligible public water systems, New Hampshire’s state leadership successfully maximized its slice of the national settlement pool to bring these vital cleanup resources directly home to local communities.
To understand how these dangerous chemicals ended up in public drinking water, it is necessary to look at the history of Aqueous Film-Forming Foam. For decades, chemical manufacturers marketed and sold AFFF to military bases, municipal airports, industrial plants, and local fire departments as a highly effective tool for smothering intense, fuel-based fires.
However, AFFF was formulated using heavy concentrations of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). When firefighters sprayed these foams during training exercises or emergency responses, the chemical runoff did not simply vanish. Instead, the toxic compounds washed into the soil, trickled down through the earth, and contaminated the local groundwater tables that feed public municipal wells.
Because PFAS chemicals are highly water-soluble, they travel easily through water systems, spreading contamination far from the initial site where the foam was sprayed. Over decades of unchecked use, these “forever chemicals” have migrated into public drinking supplies, exposing hundreds of thousands of everyday people to invisible, tasteless, and odorless chemical hazards every time they drink a glass of water.
The widespread contamination of public water systems is a major public health crisis. Scientific research conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and leading medical institutions has established that there is no safe level of exposure for certain types of PFAS chemicals.
When humans ingest these compounds through contaminated drinking water, the chemicals bind to proteins in the blood and accumulate in vital organs. Over time, regular exposure to even minuscule amounts of PFAS can lead to severe, chronic health conditions, including:
Testicular, kidney, and thyroid cancers
Severe liver damage and elevated cholesterol levels
Decreased fertility and pregnancy-induced hypertension
Immune system suppression, which reduces the effectiveness of vaccines
Developmental delays, low birth weight, and behavioral issues in children
By bringing these lawsuits, New Hampshire is working to ensure that the massive corporate conglomerates that reaped billions in profits from these toxic formulations—rather than local taxpayers—foot the astronomical bill for cleaning up the environmental and human fallout.
The $1.815 million payment from BASF will not disappear into a general government fund. By state law, the entire settlement sum will be deposited directly into the New Hampshire Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund (DWGTF).
From there, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) will oversee the strategic distribution of the money. The funds are legally earmarked to go directly to qualifying public water systems across the state to support critical PFAS mitigation, testing, and filtration projects.
Because different municipal water systems are in various stages of addressing chemical contamination, NHDES has organized local utilities into targeted groups. This allows the state to distribute the settlement money where it is most desperately needed, helping local water districts install advanced activated carbon or ion-exchange filtration systems designed to strip “forever chemicals” out of municipal water lines before they ever reach local homes.
New Hampshire has long been a national leader in the fight against environmental pollution. In 2019, the state became one of the very first in the country to establish strict, enforceable drinking water standards for PFAS, and it filed a pioneering lawsuit on behalf of all its citizens and public water systems to hold the chemical industry liable for the cleanup.
By filing a single, unified action on behalf of all public water systems, the New Hampshire Department of Justice streamlined the legal process. This consolidated approach prevented hundreds of individual towns and small water districts from having to fund their own incredibly expensive corporate lawsuits, allowing the state to negotiate with massive chemical entities from a position of maximum strength.
The BASF settlement represents just the fourth major national water system agreement resolved under the ongoing multi-district litigation in South Carolina. It joins previous multi-billion-dollar nationwide settlements secured against other massive chemical manufacturers, including the 3M Company, the DuPont entities, and the Tyco/Chemguard corporations.
While the $1.815 million BASF payment is a major victory, it represents just one piece of a much larger financial recovery. To date, New Hampshire has successfully clawed back more than $35 million from various PFAS manufacturers, with additional annual payments scheduled to flow into the state through 2033.
State officials are quick to emphasize that these settlements only cover a single category of damages—specifically, the costs associated with testing and treating public drinking water systems. The state’s broader lawsuits are still active, and legal teams are continuing to pursue these chemical giants for other categories of environmental destruction, such as damage to natural resources, soil contamination, and private property degradation.
“This settlement payment is bringing crucial resources to the State to assist our public water systems in addressing PFAS contamination in their water sources,” Attorney General Formella said in a statement. “We remain committed to holding the manufacturers of harmful PFAS compounds and AFFF accountable and will not stop fighting to ensure that all Granite Staters have access to safe, clean drinking water.”
Because these national class action settlements are designed to protect public infrastructure, the funding from the BASF, 3M, DuPont, and Tyco agreements is restricted to public water systems. Under the terms of the national agreements, a “Public Water System” is defined as any piped water network that contains at least 15 service connections or regularly serves an average of at least 25 people daily.
You may be eligible to benefit from these clean-up funds indirectly if:
Your home or business is connected to a municipal, town, or community water system in New Hampshire.
Your local water utility has detected actionable levels of PFAS in its source water.
Your community water provider has submitted the required testing and baseline water-use data to the national claims administrator.
Please note that these specific public utility settlements do not cover privately owned drinking water wells or individual, non-transient private water sources. However, New Hampshire continues to maintain separate state programs to assist private well owners who detect PFAS contamination on their property.
New cases and investigations, settlement deadlines, and news straight to your inbox.
