NHDES: small water systems run by associations will be hit hardest by PFAS limits
NHDES: small water systems run by associations will be hit hardest by PFAS limits
2026-09-15 · New Hampshire · Regulation · Proposed — not yet introduced
What is proposed. New Hampshire's Department of Environmental Services has written PFAS drinking-water regulations and is holding them, unfinalized, until federal standards stop moving. Brandon Kernen of NHDES, speaking in April 2026: "We have drafted PFAS regulations. They are done and ready to go."1
Nothing here is yet a New Hampshire rule. What binds today are the state's existing maximum contaminant levels, adopted in 2019 — 12 parts per trillion for PFOA and 15 ppt for PFOS — and the federal rule.
The number that should reach association boards
Kernen's estimate of the federal standards' reach, as reported: "The stricter federal standards for PFOA and PFOS will require about 200 water systems in New Hampshire to install treatment systems or combine with other communities" — roughly tripling the number of systems currently acting.
And the identification of who is exposed, in his own words: "Small water systems, often operated by homeowners associations, may be hit hardest, if they haven't been saving up to install new treatment equipment."
Why associations are water utilities in New Hampshire
A New Hampshire condominium or subdivision that is not on municipal water usually owns its own supply — a well, pumps, storage, distribution mains, sometimes treatment — as common area. That makes the association a public water system in the regulatory sense, and DES's own definition of a community water system expressly reaches large homeowner-association and cooperative-owned subdivisions.
The federal clock is the operative one: monitoring obligations in 2027, compliance in 2029.
What it changes for a board, and when
Not the rules. The reserve plan.
Treatment for PFAS is a capital project, and it is the kind that does not phase. An association reaching a compliance deadline in 2029 with no reserve line for water treatment has three options, all of them bad: a special assessment, a loan, or consolidation with a neighbouring system. The board that starts in 2026 has the fourth option, which is a funded reserve.
The sequencing that follows from the federal dates:
2027 — monitoring. This is when an association finds out what its own numbers are. Many New Hampshire association-run systems have never sampled for PFAS, so the result is genuinely unknown until it arrives. A board planning a budget should treat 2027 as the year it acquires a fact it may not like.
2027 to 2029 — engineering and funding. If treatment is required, this is the whole runway. Design, DES review, procurement and construction inside two years is tight for a volunteer board.
2029 — compliance.
The federal instability is the reason for the New Hampshire delay
EPA set limits for six PFAS compounds in April 2024, then announced in May 2025 that it was rescinding four of them while retaining PFOA and PFOS at 4 parts per trillion. That is why New Hampshire is holding: finalizing state rules against a moving federal target produces rules that have to be redone.
For a board, the honest read is that the direction is settled and the details are not. PFOA and PFOS at 4 ppt is the number to plan against. Whether New Hampshire's eventual rule is stricter than the federal floor, as its 2019 MCLs were for a time, is unresolved.
The other drinking-water rules that moved
While the PFAS chapter waits, several rules that bind association-run systems were readopted in the window. Two reach associations directly:
Env-Dw 720, Inspections; Significant Deficiencies; Assessments (Document #14427, effective November 21, 2025) is the sanitary-survey regime — the inspection, the finding of a significant deficiency, and the corrective-action obligation that follows. It is the mechanism by which an association-run system's problems become enforceable.
Env-Dw 506, Seasonal Public Water Systems (Document #14342, effective August 21, 2025) is aimed squarely at the New Hampshire profile: a lake-region or ski-area condominium whose water system shuts down for part of the year and must be started up correctly each season.
Also in the window: Env-Dw 709 on microbiological monitoring (November 2025), Env-Dw 803 on notifications including significant deficiencies (November 2025), and Env-Dw 1500, a PFAS removal rebate program for private wells (Document #14201, effective February 26, 2025). That last one is for private wells, not community systems — an association-owned system does not qualify, and it is an easy mistake for a board to make.
What to watch next
Watch for New Hampshire to move its PFAS chapter out of the drawer once the federal rule settles. Because the department says the text is written, adoption could be quick when it comes, and the comment window correspondingly short. An association-run system that wants to be heard should be on the department's rulemaking notice list now rather than after the notice issues.
An association that buys its water from a municipality is outside all of this. The obligations here attach to the operator of the system, and for a community on town water, that is the town.
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