DUXBURY - July 6, 2026 - The Duxbury Selectboard is wrestling with a burgeoning public health dilemma as new hydraulic modeling reveals that the town’s Lakeshore Well is actively pumping water that violates federal toxicity limits effective in 2029. While the town remains in technical compliance with older state rules, local modeling shows that during peak summer irrigation, roughly 200 local households are receiving water with hazardous PFOA concentrations that exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe maximum contaminant level (MCL) of four parts per trillion.
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The Selectboard received a high-stakes briefing from Alston Potts, a project manager at Apex Companies, detailing a comprehensive hydraulic and chemical breakdown of Duxbury’s water grid. The engineering data highlighted an alarming disparity between winter and summer operations. During the winter, the Lakeshore Well remains mostly offline—limiting local exposure—but surging seasonal demands, driven almost entirely by automated lawn irrigation and swimming pool refills, force the town to lean heavily on the contaminated well to ensure fire protection and maintain tap pressure.
The technical findings ignited a fierce debate regarding transparency and immediate remediation. Selectboard members expressed deep frustration that local residents are unknowingly consuming water containing elevated carcinogens that violate the 2029 limit. The board collectively dismissed utilizing multi-year localized averages to mask the threat, demanding that real-time information and immediate household alerts dictate the town’s response. However, water officials noted that total isolation or shutdown of the Lakeshore Well is currently impossible without catastrophic drops in grid capacity. Local advocates also pointed out that neighbor town grids, including sections of the Gurnet area fed by Marshfield, are confronting similarly elevated chemical metrics.
"[The model shows that] 200 residences right now... is over four parts per trillion... We are delivering water that is not compliant... We've got to find alternatives." — Selectboard Member Fernando Guitart
