Vermont

Vermont has been a national leader on PFAS policy. The state response began with the 2016 discovery of extensive PFOA contamination in Bennington and North Bennington from the former ChemFab facility and its successor Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics. Testing revealed PFOA levels in some private wells as high as 2,880 parts per trillion and a plume that continues to spread. Saint-Gobain signed a settlement agreement with the state to extend municipal water to hundreds of affected households.

In 2019 the Vermont legislature passed Act 21, directing the Agency of Natural Resources to adopt an enforceable drinking water MCL for PFAS. The resulting rule set a combined MCL of 20 parts per trillion for five PFAS compounds, including PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFHpA, and PFNA. Vermont was among the first states to regulate multiple PFAS as a group with a combined threshold.

The Vermont legislature has passed additional product-level laws including S.20, which bans PFAS in food packaging, carpets, fabric treatments, ski wax, and menstrual products, with staggered effective dates. Firefighter protection laws have also restricted Class B foam. The state has an active PFAS advisory committee that makes policy recommendations to lawmakers.

Litigation has been ongoing. The Vermont Attorney General has joined multistate actions against 3M and DuPont, and Vermont residents have pursued separate claims. Public water systems in Vermont are subject to both the state combined MCL and the federal compliance timeline requiring initial monitoring by 2027 and treatment installation by 2029.