When Erica and Mike Giroux, both business owners, moved into the Broad Brook area of East Windsor in 2016, their well water test showed they had potable water, safe for drinking. That all changed in 2021, however, when the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit Connecticut. East Windsor is a rural area with farmland just up the street from the Giroux’s home, and the resultant runoff from heavy rains flooded their yard with reddish-brown water.

The flooding not only caused damage to their home but it also likely contaminated their well. They had no idea, however, until they were alerted to potential problems by a neighbor who had recently tested his well water. Erica and Mike had their water tested again and found nitrate levels had shot up from 5.6 mg/L when they initially tested it in 2016 to 20 mg/L, a nearly four hundred percent increase.

Nitrates can cause problems for young children and long-term exposure can result in increased risk for cancer in adults. While they can be naturally occurring, nitrates are largely associated with leaking septic systems and fertilizer from agricultural lands. Safe and potable water has levels below 10 mg/L. The Giroux’s, who have children, had to immediately start buying water to drink, and they reached out to both the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the Department of Public Health (DPH) to see what could be done.

But Erica’s efforts to get safe drinking water into her home again would take four years as she tried to navigate a bureaucratic system that continually “passed the buck,” when it came to getting the situation resolved. Their path to clean drinking water involved two different state departments, a 1988 settlement agreement over tobacco pesticides, the involvement of a state representative, the utility company CT Water, and multiple different contractors.

“Everyone just passed the buck. To this day, I still don’t know exactly what should have happened, I just know that they didn’t, I think, follow the correct protocols from the beginning to help,” Erica said in an interview. “And while this is going on, we’re paying thousands of dollars to bring in water.”

“This story was the bane of my existence for the first several years of my career,” said Rep. Jaime Foster, D-East Windsor, who helped the Giroux’s when they became frustrated, seemingly getting nowhere with DEEP. “In this situation it took hundreds of phone calls and chasing down every lead and the Giroux’s are very lucky – even though their situation was a cacophony of problems.”

The Giroux family was “lucky” because their home was covered under the 1988 EDB Settlement Agreement. EDB – ethylene dibromide – was a pesticide used by tobacco farms prior to 1983 that polluted well water and is a cancer-causing agent. As part of that settlement agreement, the wells polluted with EDB were outfitted with special filtration systems and subsequently tested and monitored by DEEP using funds from the settlement. Because the Giroux’s property was part of that settlement agreement, DEEP was able to tap those funds to get them connected to the main public water line in the street. 

According to a 2016 letter from DEEP’s Bureau of Water Protection and Land Reuse Remediation Division to the previous owner of the Giroux’s home, the EDB Settlement required the state to monitor and maintain the filtration system until 2018, after which “the State will determine whether the GAC filter system or whether connection of public water proves to be the most cost effective method to supply homes with a source of potable drinking water.”

But Erica worries that “luck” can also cause confusion for other similarly situated families, leaving some residents drinking water they think is safe but may not be.

In May of 2022 — months after the Giroux’s had found alarming levels of nitrates in their water — DEEP and DPH both tested the Giroux’s water, found elevated nitrate levels, and issued reports stating the water was not potable. However, just one month later, in June, the very same Water Protection and Land Reuse Remediation Division at DEEP issued another water test saying the Giroux’s water was potable and therefore safe for drinking. She had two reports from the same agency within a month of each other that came to opposing conclusions.

That’s because the June test was part of DEEP’s routine EDB monitoring, which only tests for EDB, not for other possible contaminants like nitrogen. Similarly, the GAC filtration system that came with their home only works for certain contaminants. Since the filtration system was working, and DEEP only tested for EDB, they issued a report stating the water was safe.

“That’s what I think is messing people up,” Erica said. “They say the state is testing it, not realizing these are the only things they’re testing for, so if you have nitrates or anything else, it renders the whole system in the basement useless. A lot of people I know who are on these systems don’t drink the water at all, even with it. It specifically works for just those chemicals and can’t take anything out.” 

But the issue of safe drinking water is much more expansive than just the Giroux’s experience or the EDB settlement areas. Statewide private well water testing is now revealing concerning levels of uranium, arsenic and PFAS in well water, along with more common contaminants like nitrates and bacteria. 

One problem is that private wells are only required to be tested once, leading many to believe their water is safe even though water safety can change over time. Another problem is that water contamination issues for private individuals and municipalities are prohibitively expensive to fix, and when it comes to mitigating well water contamination, it appears the two agencies whose employees handle well water issues – DEEP and DPH – are sometimes at odds over which department handles which issues, or whether they handle well-water issues at all. In the end, the homeowner is basically on their own.

“Well water contamination is like crumbling foundations was — no one is responsible, no one is taking ownership,” Foster said. “There are a small number of contaminants that, in that case you have a protocol, but for a large number of contaminants you’re basically landless and lawless. You’ve got no one there to help you.”

After Erica reached out to DEEP in November 2021 regarding the contamination of her well, it appeared at first that everything would go smoothly, that there was an easy solution involving connection to the main water line. 

In a November 2, 2021, email, Environmental Analyst and EDB Program Coordinator MaryAnne Danyluk responded to Erica’s concern about the neighbor’s testing results, letting her know that DEEP “is only testing for bacteria upon the site’s next scheduled sampling event,” and that she could get the water tested herself through a third-party.

“The potability of the drinking water supply well rests on the responsibility of the homeowners. There is only funding for monitoring and maintaining of GAC filter systems associated with ethylene dibromide (EDB),” Danyluk wrote. “If you have your well tested and if bacteria is detected the Department will make arrangements for our contractor to conduct a change out at no cost to you.”

Those bacteria tests came in May of 2022, with a third-party testing company, DEEP, and DPH all testing and confirming high nitrate levels in the Giroux’s water system. The Giroux’s were informed that they had to get three quotes to connect them to the main water line from a list of approved contractors, but that didn’t go as easily or smoothly as they hoped.

“We spent a year and a half going in circles because the project was too small for the bigger companies, no one wanted to come out to do it, and two, I think when people saw the government was stepping in to pay, the quotes we were getting were outrageous, like thirty grand.”

Erica says she was then informed that she didn’t have to use a contractor from the approved list, and that DEEP “would front the cost to do this.” She finally found a contractor who thought he could do the work for $17,000 but was unsure as it involved drilling underground from the basement to the road, a method that might not be successful due to underground rock.

According to emails between Erica and Normandy Avery, the new EDB program coordinator who had taken over when Danyluk retired in 2022, “once the contract is signed with the chosen contractor we will coordinate with our financial office to cut a check to you for the calculated funding available from the settlement funds.” 

Then, just a little while later, Erica received another email saying pretty much the opposite: “After many discussions with my management and financial office on the process for which we will cover the cost of connecting your homes to the public water supply, the State requires reimbursement. You will have to front some of the cost for the connection, and we will reimburse you.” The email then gave instructions for the Giroux’s to establish themselves as “vendors” for the state, whereby they could receive the payments three months later in installments.

The problem, however, was that the Giroux’s, a small family who owned small businesses, couldn’t afford to front the money.

Erica’s frustration and confusion shows in emails with DEEP officials in 2024: “As I have stated throughout this, I am really confused now how things seem to be continually changing,” Erica wrote in a May 31 email. “Each change seems to add more to our plate that we are responsible for monetarily… Had we known at all that we would be responsible to front this cost we could have worked on this before it got to this point. It never once came up until April. Why?”

“For three years they’re telling us they’re going to cut us a check,” Erica said. “Then all of sudden they’re like ‘you’re going to have to front this,” and I was like we can’t. That’s when I got Jaime Foster involved, because this is not going to go anywhere. This is year three of this, what do you want me to do?”

Erica says she felt “gaslighted” by the whole experience, as DEEP officials kept changing their positions, stories, and, at some points, putting the problem back on the Giroux’s claiming the area had always had a nitrate problem, and therefore connecting to the main water line was their problem, despite the fact that DEEP had already acknowledged the “jump” in nitrate levels in their well was “concerning.” 

According to emails, some DEEP officials tried to blame it on the Giroux’s septic system leaking, or claimed they were unaware of the situation until 2024 and were unaware that the neighbor’s house was affected as well, despite the neighbor being cc’d on the emails.

In a June 2024 email to Rep. Foster and East Windsor First Selectman Jason Bowsza, Erica inquired about filing a formal complaint against DEEP officials, claiming they “straight up lied about major parts of this process,” during a meeting the previous day.

“We were knowingly at this point given bad information for years, I think,” Giroux wrote. “When I tried to bring it up I was met with ‘we can’t help what happened in the past’ I am really struggling to accept this answer. I am really starting to lean towards the fact that they didn’t want to initiate any investigations because money or effort.”

“It got to the point with DEEP where I couldn’t hold conversations with them. They would say one thing, and then change their mind, so I don’t know if there were no policies in place, but this program has been running for years and years,” Erica said. “It got to the point that there were a dozen people in these meetings, but they would just not do anything.”

“What’s frustrating for me, is I thought their situation had been handled,” Foster said in an interview. “I met them when I was first running for election and then three years later, I found out it was still a problem. Years had passed with Erica going back and forth with DEEP.”

Foster believes part of the delay had to do with the “silver tsunami” of 2022 in which the number of state employee retirements doubled due to contractual changes in pension calculations, causing Erica’s issue to get “lost in the shuffle.” Furthermore, the agency was putting a lot of the work on Erica, asking her to do things she was unfamiliar with or uncomfortable handling, like vetting contractors who were telling her two different things and, of course, the big layout of money.

“When I found out about it, I convened a meeting with everybody and tried to hold everybody’s feet to the fire, and we got things started,” Foster said. “I wish DEEP had done that because obviously I don’t have those skills either. My expertise is not groundwater contamination.”

Eventually, they were all able to work out a solution with CT Water to connect the Girouxs to the main water line, and getting DEEP to pay the contractor directly, but Foster says it should not have been put on Erica to figure out whether contractors’ estimates were appropriate and the whole issue should have been elevated to more senior officials at DEEP to get a more timely response.

But the issue is more systemic than just Erica’s well water. When it comes to well water contamination, whether DEEP or DPH is responsible for looking into the issue varies depending on which contaminants are in the water supply and where the contaminant came from; it allows for one department to point the finger at the other. There is also disagreement on what constitutes a contaminant in well water. Nitrates, DEEP argues, are not necessarily toxic, but you still don’t want to be drinking them.  

“It really was a disaster. It was one of the most frustrating things that I’ve dealt with, but I’ll be honest, that is the problem,” Foster said. 

Obviously, it wasn’t just the Giroux’s who were dealing with a contamination issue in their well-water. The neighbor across the street also had nitrate contamination in their well water and worked with DEEP to get it resolved. The neighbor indicated to Inside Investigator in an email that his situation was “a little different,” but “it was still an ordeal to get everything done.”

Giroux, however, believes that DEEP and DPH should have taken more direct action when it became apparent that several homes had lost clean drinking water through no fault of their own, including ensuring they were supplied with drinking water until the problem was fixed. 

“If something happened that was like an event that triggered all of these houses to have a problem, what should have happened back then is the health department should have come out and tested,” Erica said. “Part of the issue we ran into is they never triggered the correct course of action. DEEP should have triggered the health department, which should have triggered the town to do an emergency situation.”

According to emails, DEEP officials did notify DPH’s private well water program and the local health department. Officials at DPH, however, indicated in emails that they would be “stepping back so as not to further complicate the process,” that Erica was already going through with DEEP. 

But there also appears to be disagreement over when and how either agency steps in to mitigate well water contamination. Foster says that when door-knocking and meeting people without potable water, she will alert both DEEP and DPH, but often each agency tries to say it is not their responsibility and push it onto the other. 

“A lot of times DEEP and DPH will be like ‘not me, not me,’ based on the contaminant,” Foster said. “I have the least funded per capita local health department in the state that covers the highest amount of mileage, and they just don’t have the capacity to help on this issue, but honestly it doesn’t seem like our state agencies do either.”

According to DPH’s Private Well Contamination Coordination Protocol, it’s a bit of a mishmash of agencies that handle well water contamination depending on the source of the contamination, and there appears to be no clear-cut division of responsibilities, a problem that may continue to grow as more and more chemicals turn up in well water supplies. 

The protocol indicates that DPH can initiate wider testing and notification of the town if one or more private wells have elevated levels of “manmade” contaminants, but much of the protocol language reverts to DEEP to investigate. 

“Much of this is not under the direct control of DPH,” the website states. “The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection maintains primary responsibility in cases where private wells may be at risk of becoming contaminated or have been contaminated as a result of manmade sources of pollution.”

“DEEP does not investigate cases of naturally occurring pollution, except in cases where such contaminants is mobilized by manmade activity,” DPH protocol says, but goes on to say that for naturally occurring contaminants, “No one agency has been delegated authority over this topic, but in general DEEP programs will not follow up on naturally occurring chemicals.”

According to DPH, the local health department (LHD) is “typically the lead for problems of bacterial contamination and may also assume the lead for contamination originating with septic systems, such as nitrates.” Then again, if the nitrates are “associated with an activity under their jurisdiction,” the problem is put back on DEEP. 

Over at DEEP, however, they say drinking water is the responsibility of DPH if a natural contaminant is discovered, and that DEEP will intervene in the event of manmade contaminants. In Erica’s case, nitrate contamination can be from both natural and manmade sources. While Erica believed the elevated nitrate levels originated from farm runoff during Ida, there was never an investigation conducted to find out for sure.

“When you end up with streets where people don’t have potable water, that to me signals an environmental contaminant,” Foster said. “DEEP doesn’t agree that that is always the case. It depends on what the contaminant is.”

In comments sent to Inside Investigator by DEEP, spokesman James Fowler said nitrate contamination was not “squarely within DEEP’s authority to remediate,” and that DEEP only assisted the Girouxs because follow-up tests showed the EDB levels in their water were rising again. Elevated nitrogen levels, Fowler said, would typically be an issue for DPH.

“Common in many agricultural areas, nitrates can originate from a wide range of diffuse sources – including fertilizers, animal waste, and malfunctioning septic systems – and no single responsible party can be identified,” Fowler wrote. “Such issues are best addressed at the municipal level or with guidance from the Department of Public Health.”

Similarly, DEEP’s Potable Water Program “assists individuals whose private or public drinking water supply wells may be at risk of becoming contaminated or have become contaminated as a result of human activity.” 

If the source of pollution can be found, the DEEP Commissioner can order the polluter to provide potable water in the short term and connection to the public water system in the long term. Again, if it’s a natural contaminant, the issue gets kicked back to DPH.

Erica also believes that because the well contamination affected several households and was no fault of the homeowner, it should have constituted an emergency situation and sparked faster action to get them potable water in the short and long term. Emails show that since DEEP never opened an investigation into the well water contamination on her street, DEEP couldn’t require the Town of East Windsor to supply them with bottled water.

“I incorrectly understood that there was an active investigation into the nitrates under which it would be expected for the Town to provide bottled water to your home until a permanent source of drinking water is provided to your home,” wrote Veronica Tanguay of DEEP’s Potable Water Program in a May 2024 email. “Since there is not an active investigation, DEEP can’t require the Town to provide bottled water to your home.”

Prior to 2013, the DEEP commissioner was authorized to provide potable water to residents affected by groundwater pollution on a short-term basis until either the person responsible for the groundwater pollution supplies potable water or a long-term solution is reached. That authority, however, was eliminated in the 2012 budget implementer without a public hearing, according to testimony submitted by former Rep. Chris Davis, R-Ellington, in support of a bill to reinstate the DEEP commissioner’s authority.

In his written testimony from 2014 in support of Senate Bill 306, Davis said there were over forty homes in the Broad Brook area of East Windsor that were not covered under the EDB Settlement and had been provided filtration systems under DEEP’s potable water program. “After last session, however, it was uncovered that the program had been eliminated without warning or public hearing in the budget implementer,” Davis wrote.

SB 306 was accompanied by House Bill 5420, which would provide grants to municipalities who were ordered by DEEP to provide potable drinking water. Neither bill passed, and DEEP opposed both, arguing that SB 306 was unnecessary because the private sector could install filtration systems and bottled water was readily available at the store; DEEP opposed HB 5420 over concerns about its cost.

Under current statute, if DEEP determines the groundwater is polluted and DPH determines the pollution creates a health risk, the DEEP Commissioner can order the municipality or the person responsible for the pollution to provide potable water. In cases where no blame can be assigned, the commissioner may “prepare or arrange for the provision of a long-term potable drinking water supply,” or order the municipality to supply both short and long-term potable water, but there is no requirement. 

This past session, Rep. Foster and several other lawmakers introduced a bill to “establish protocols for the identification, remediation and prevention of contaminated well water,” but the legislation never even received a public hearing.

While the bill was never fully fleshed out, according to an email Foster sent to fellow lawmakers looking for support, she hoped to provide a standard protocol for homeowners to report well water contamination and referral to the proper agency to provide the homeowner help; update how DEEP and DPH canvass an affected area and notify homeowners, create a central database mapping well-water problems, and creating a tax abatement for homes without potable drinking water, among several other changes. Foster says it’s going to be her “big project” next year.

DEEP and DPH see their role in well-water contamination as largely educational. In an email to Inside Investigator, DPH indicated their role is “to provide health risk exposure information on the contaminants of concern, information on best available treatment options to address the problem, and provide information on possible funding solutions through our [Drinking Water State Revolving Fund] DWSRF program if a water main is a viable solution.”

The DWSRF is a federally funded program for states to award low-interest loans to communities and nonprofits to establish safe drinking water infrastructure, but does not appear to be available to individual homeowners.

Following the 2012 amendments to the Potable Water program, DEEP officials indicated they saw their role as “providing education to property owners and local health directors on how to address short-term potable water supply, investigating potential sources of pollution, parties responsible for the pollution, prosecuting enforcement actions as appropriate, and continuing to assist municipalities on providing long-term potable water such as through the extension of water main should that approach be cost effective,” former DEEP Commissioner Robert Klee wrote in 2014. 

The problem, however, is that often the long-term solution to well contamination is to connect to the public water supply, which – as Erica found out – is quite costly. Rep. Foster likens it to installing the last mile of fiber optic cable: it is prohibitively expensive and only helps a few people at a time.

“This final mile of people just need city water. I can’t imagine another way around it unless you want to pay for filtration systems. But after you replace it several times, you would have been better off hooking up to city water,” Foster said. “It’s about $1 million for a quarter mile. It’s not affordable.”

Not far from the Girouxs is a section of East Windsor called the School Hill Association, a community of roughly 31 households where the well water tested between 31 and 41 times the safe levels for nitrates and nitrites, according to tests conducted by DPH between 2018 and 2023, prompting local town leadership to push for connecting those households to the CT Water system and secure funding from both state and federal sources.

According to town meeting minutes and state reports, East Windsor has thus far either received, or will receive, $1.2 million via the federal government, $4 million through a state grant which included 84 housing units in the Park Hill complex, and appears set to receive $1.1 million through the revolving water fund. Even if those awards fully fund the project, which they may not, it averages $54,782 per household.

But well-water contamination is a statewide issue for the 23 percent of state residents who have well-water. People with wells often don’t test regularly, and studies of Connecticut’s well water are testing positive for uranium, arsenic and PFAS chemicals, alongside other contaminants like nitrogen.

“The biggest issue is that people with a private well, the only time that is required by law to be tested is when the well gets installed,” said Dr. Michael Dietz, director of the Connecticut Institute of Water Resources (CIWR) at the University of Connecticut. “If you own a private well you could live there for thirty, forty years and never test that water after the first test was done and that would be fine if things didn’t change over time, but unfortunately the quality of the groundwater getting into your well can change over time.”

The CIWR has been doing statewide testing of well water in Connecticut over the past four years, testing roughly 900 homes, and found that about half of those homes exceeded safe levels of some type of contaminant. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the exceeded level is serious or a health issue; Dietz says it could be a high level of iron, or elevated pH levels, but there are elevated levels of things that could be harmful to one’s health. 

About 30 percent of the test wells had high levels of total coliform bacteria. Total coliform bacteria are not necessarily harmful but is an “indicator species,” that can signal the presence of other harmful bacteria or viruses, including e. coli and “other nasty stuff,” according to Dietz. The presence of such bacteria can depend on how deep one’s well is: Dietz says that every shallow, hand-dug well tested positive for total coliform bacteria and E.coli.

“Those are very problematic,” Dietz said. “You can still use the well, they’re grandfathered in if you buy a house that has one, but you can’t build a new house and dig a shallow well, and these are the reasons why, because they’re vulnerable to contamination.”

Dietz says that bacteria issues for well water is fairly widespread across the state, while elevated nitrate issues are more concentrated in areas heavy with agriculture, like East Windsor. While the CIWR’s testing did not find many exceedances for nitrates in their statewide testing, Dietz and his team, increasingly, are finding things like uranium and arsenic in Connecticut’s well water.

Uranium originates from the bedrock and there’s no way to know if it’s in the water supply until one specifically tests for it. Prior to 2022, uranium was not on the list of contaminants that would be tested; someone who tested their well water in 2021 would not have been tested for uranium, and the same goes for arsenic. Dietz notes that previous studies have shown that arsenic also appears in private wells near apple orchards, the remnants of pesticides sprayed on the orchards in the fifties.

“The vast majority of people in the state who have had wells installed before 2022, never tested for arsenic or uranium,” Dietz said. “Statewide, it’s about five percent of homes that are above the drinking water standard for those, but the EPA has a goal for those contaminants of zero, meaning there’s no safe level to be consuming those over time. So, the percentage of people who have some measurable amount is higher, more like ten percent.”

According to the EPA, both contaminants are considered cancer-causing. A 2009 study of 478 private wells across 116 communities in Massachusetts conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey found that 13 percent of the wells exceeded safe levels for arsenic and 3 percent for uranium, but this was more than a decade ago, when the EPA considered 10 ppb for arsenic and 30 ppb for uranium safe levels. Now the safe level is zero.

And while uranium and arsenic are bad and only now being tested for, PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” have captured much media attention over the past several years for good reason; they are cancer causing chemicals previously used in a variety of household, commercial, and industrial products, including firefighting foam that in 2019 spilled into the Farmington River from a private hangar at Bradley International Airport, and they have found their way into the water supply.

“It’s definitely a big issue,” Dietz said. “Basically, wherever people are looking for PFAS, even in some private wells, they’re finding some level of these things pretty much everywhere. The question then becomes, are the levels above the drinking water standards or the action levels the State of Connecticut have set and what do people need to do about it.”

Following the spill at Bradley International Airport, Gov. Ned Lamont announced a PFAS Action Plan for the state to address the growing concern over PFAS, including forming a task force to study and address the problem and banning PFAS in both firefighting foam and food packaging.

In 2023, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act awarded nearly $19 million to Connecticut to address PFAS chemicals in the drinking water of small and disadvantaged communities. In 2024, the Connecticut State Bond Commission approved $3 million in bonds for DEEP to implement well water testing for PFAS, with a focus on “socially vulnerable, distressed, and environmental justice communities.”

PFAS is not part of the normal water testing, and is more expensive, Dietz says, running three to four hundred dollars for a single test. However, if PFAS chemicals are discovered, there are remedies, including a reverse osmosis filter. Those households that are part of Connecticut’s EPA grant, however, will not have to pay for testing because it is covered under the grant.

The Connecticut Institute of Water Resources also offers well-water testing, and Dietz says that they not only offer easy to understand test results but will help families navigate the process of addressing contamination issues if they arise. Public water supplies, on the other hand, automatically test their water regularly and submit the results to the EPA. Testing for PFAS is being phased in as a new requirement, although some public water companies have already voluntarily begun testing.

“The good news is we’ve made some progress on the PFAS front for people in the CT Water system, because there’s PFAS in all of the feeder systems now,” Rep. Foster said. 

That progress was House Bill 6777, which now allows utility companies to recover expenses for water infrastructure upgrades that the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) determines are “necessary to meet state and federal drinking water regulations.”

According to testimony submitted by Daniel Lawrence of Aquarion Water in support of the bill, the federal government’s new regulations concerning PFAS must be implemented by 2029 and updating the water infrastructure to meet those regulations is estimated to cost between $180 and $200 million. The president of CT water also estimated a roughly $200 million cost to comply with the new regulations.

While the costs of those infrastructure upgrades will be borne by the water companies’ customers, the new legislation will allow a cost recovery method that will smooth out those costs over a longer period of time through smaller, incremental increases.

“It’s definitely an emerging issue and one that is of high concern for the Department of Public Health, and DEEP, as well,” Dietz said.

To be sure, DEEP is not in the business of connecting people with private wells to water mains. In their statement to Inside Investigator that the department “took substantial steps” to accommodate the Giroux’s “financial situation,” and the paying for the connection “was made possible only because of the settlement program.”

“It’s important to note that DEEP does not connect homeowners to public drinking water as part of its role or responsibilities. In this case, however, because the property was eligible for assistance under the EDB settlement program — which exists specifically to address contamination from historical pesticide use — DEEP was able to use settlement funds to cover the cost of connecting the Giroux property to the public water system,” Fowler wrote. “Beyond that, DEEP took the extra step of directly facilitating the connection with the local water utility, eliminating the need for the homeowner to front any money — a process that is typically the homeowner’s responsibility.”

The Giroux’s “financial situation,” when faced with a project cost in which estimates ranged from $17,000 to $30,000, is not particularly unique; it would likely be difficult for many families to just come up with that kind of money, let alone two small business owners, who had to purchase bottled water for several years. But it may become an issue facing more Connecticut residents as private wells across the state may begin showing signs of arsenic or uranium or PFAS, let alone other contaminants like nitrates and nitrites.

As those concerns grow, both DEEP and DPH may need more clarity about who handles what and what protocols to follow if wells are contaminated due to weather-related events like major storm flooding, or chemical spills, something Rep. Foster says she intends to focus on in upcoming sessions with her proposed legislation.

It is also an issue facing communities, as well. The cost for installing or extending public water systems and getting more households connected to the public system is expensive — likely more expensive than many small and rural municipalities who have more residents on private wells can afford. As lawmakers at the Capitol push for more housing across the state, particularly “affordable,” multi-unit dwellings, the need for extending public water mains could become more pronounced. 

Indeed, the $4 million grant awarded to East Windsor was predicated on extending the water main to the East Windsor Housing Authority’s Park Hill complex of 84 housing units and to the School Hill neighborhood. That extension, according to the grant award, “will provide the necessary infrastructure for the Housing Authority to implement a second phase and develop 123 new affordable units of housing.” 

And while the Girouxs and their neighbors once again have potable water, not everything went as planned: the water line installation left a pipe sticking out of the wall in their finished basement and damaged their ceiling; the asphalt patch in the road sunk below the rest of the street, the underground drilling left a sinkhole near their foundation, and they’ve been flooded several more times since Ida with more runoff from the farm up the road.

The continuing problems prompted Erica to take to social media, which elicited a response from local officials. Eventually, the local Department of Public Works went out to fix the road issue. It helped alleviate part of the problem, but to Erica, that wasn’t the point – she’d already lodged her complaints with the people who did the job, she didn’t think town taxpayers should have to cover the road repair.

But ultimately, for Erica and Mike Giroux, they remain concerned for neighbors in the area who may have state filtration systems in their home but don’t realize that when the state says their water is safe to drink, that test may not include a full test of all possible contaminants.

“We’re putting our faith in DEEP and the town and the health department to do the right thing when it comes to something like this,” Erica said. “It wasn’t just our house impacted; it was multiple houses. Something happened. And it scares me.”

“From conversations I’ve had with people, they still don’t realize. You need to be privately testing,” Erica said. “Anyone with a well, you need to be testing; you should be testing.”

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