Last week, the State of New Hampshire, His Excellency, and the Attorney General’s Office were crooning about a new 65 million-dollar settlement.
Concord, NH – Today, Governor Chris Sununu and Attorney General John Formella announce that New Hampshire will begin to receive tens of millions of dollars in settlement funds as a result of the State’s ongoing litigation against the manufacturers of PFAS and aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF).
New Hampshire is estimated to receive a total award in excess of $65 million from the 3M and DuPont water provider settlements, and the majority of these funds are expected to be received over the next 2-3 years.
“New Hampshire has consistently been at the forefront of strengthening clean drinking water standards, improving water infrastructure, and protecting Granite Staters,” said Governor Chris Sununu. “This announcement is another win in our work to limit needless exposure to these harmful chemicals.”
Regular readers will know that I have doubts about labeling PFOA and PFAS as forever chemicals or the risks they present. I don’t want it in my water or anyone else’s, but the dose is the poison, and the timing has always struck me as suspicious. Enviro-elites looking for ways to get ordinary Americans to reduce water consumption happen to discover all these problems everywhere, all at once. It smells like the Ozone hole scam from decades past and global warming generally. It also launders obscene sums into a system that can’t do anything without wasting half of it and laundering the rest to political “friends and family.”
Prior to the freakout, my water bill was about $120.00 a year. After “measures” were put into place – and I don’t even have a risk of PFOA or PFAS in my water – I have to spend about $500.00/ year on the same water. That’s $380.00 that isn’t going to local businesses, showing up in tips to waitstaff, or getting invested in something or someone else who might need it. Multiply that by the tens of thousands and that’s one town.
You may recognize the striking resemblance of this inflation to that of motor fuels, heating oil and gas, compliance regulations, and so on. Instead of getting the polluter to pay for local water filtration until the contamination has been diminished, everyone gets bent over a barrel in perpetuity with another cost that makes the rents go up and makes owning your slice of something to live in less affordable and more out of reach.
It’s fine and dandy to talk about zoning and affordable housing while interventions make heating, cooling, cooking, living, and drinking so expensive that there’s no affording a life in the “home” once it is built. And for all the talk about lower property taxes, how does local government operate more effectively when they, too, bear these increased ‘operating’ costs and pass them down to taxpayers?
Money received from settlements, after fees and costs, will be deposited into the N.H. Drinking Water and Groundwater Trust Fund (“DWGTF”) where it will be used to provide loans and grants to public water systems that are impacted by PFAS over applicable standards.
Standards set based on crazy left-wing scaremongering and unrealistic EPA and NHDES estimates that, coincidentally, make drinking water exponentially more expensive.