If you closed on a Bedford home this year, you signed a page you probably didn't read twice. Since January 1, 2025, every New Hampshire seller of a property with a building on it has to give buyers a standard notice covering radon, arsenic, lead, PFAS, and flood risk. The wording is identical whether the house sits in Portsmouth, Peterborough, or a cul-de-sac two miles from the Merrimack line. Nobody customizes it. Nobody is supposed to.
But part of southeastern Bedford sits inside a federally supervised cleanup zone tied to one specific industrial site, and that generic notice never mentions it by name. The form treats every well in the state the same way. The map underneath it does not.
The Notice Itself Is New, and Deliberately Generic
The PFAS language was added to RSA 477:4-a by House Bill 398, which Governor Chris Sununu signed on July 3, 2024, with an effective date of January 1, 2025. It joined existing notification requirements for radon, arsenic, and lead, and a flood-zone notice was folded in around the same time. The statutory text tells a buyer that PFAS compounds "have been detected at levels that exceed federal and/or state advisories or standards in wells throughout New Hampshire, but are more frequently detected at elevated levels in southern New Hampshire." That's it. One paragraph, same words, every transaction.
What the law doesn't do matters as much as what it does. It requires disclosure, not testing. A New Hampshire seller can sign the notice, hand it to the buyer, and never have pulled a single water sample. The buyer walks away informed that PFAS exists somewhere in the state's groundwater, which is true and also not especially useful if they're trying to figure out whether it exists in their specific well.
Why "Southern New Hampshire" Undersells What's True Here
The reason PFAS shows up more in this part of the state has a name and an address: Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, a manufacturing facility in Merrimack. PFOA was detected in a tap water sample collected inside that facility in 2016, which triggered an investigation by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services into groundwater contamination spreading through the surrounding towns. That investigation led to a 2018 Consent Decree, and the decree drew a line on a map. NHDES describes that line as the Consent Decree "Outer Boundary," and its own site confirms the shaded area on the PFAS Sampling Map "encompasses parts of Bedford, Hudson, Litchfield, Londonderry, Manchester and Merrimack."
That's not a regional generalization. It's a drawn boundary, and it cuts through Bedford rather than sitting outside it, concentrated in the sections of town closest to the Merrimack border. Two houses a few streets apart can fall on opposite sides of that line, and the standard disclosure notice a buyer signs on either one reads exactly the same.
Here's what actually differs depending on which side of the line an address sits:
| Inside the Consent Decree boundary | Outside the boundary | |
|---|---|---|
| Who samples the well | Saint-Gobain, on request (1-800-742-8498) | NHDES, on request |
| Existing infrastructure | May already have point-of-entry filtration or a municipal water connection installed under the consent decree | Typically nothing installed under this program |
| Town reimbursement eligibility | Not eligible for Bedford's own grant, since Saint-Gobain already bears that cost | Eligible if the well shows a documented exceedance |
| How to check a specific address | NHDES PFAS Sampling Dashboard | Same dashboard |
None of this appears on the signature page. It lives on a state website that a buyer has to know to visit.
The Cleanup Isn't Finished, Which Means the Map Can Still Move
Saint-Gobain began installing point-of-entry filtration systems for affected properties in December 2022. As of March 2025, those systems had been installed at 690 properties across the affected towns. Water main extensions covering areas of Merrimack and Bedford began in July 2024, with NHDES anticipating completion sometime in 2025.
The work hasn't stopped since. Under a Revised Groundwater Management Zone Work Plan submitted in December 2024, Saint-Gobain committed to continued residential well sampling, with a goal of collecting at least six PFAS sample results for every eligible property by the end of 2026. And the program's footprint keeps expanding: in March 2026, Saint-Gobain reached a separate agreement with the Town of Londonderry and NHDES to extend a watermain further into that community. This is not a settled cleanup with a closed file. It's an active, multi-year process, and the properties considered "eligible" or "affected" can shift as new sampling rounds come back.
A Deadline Five Weeks Away
Here's the detail that makes this timely rather than historical. Bedford runs its own PFAS Removal Reimbursement Grant Process through the town's Department of Public Works, separate from the state's broader rebate program. It covers eligible costs incurred between September 30, 2019, and September 30, 2026, for properties outside the Consent Decree area with a documented exceedance of one of four regulated PFAS compounds.
As of today, that window closes in roughly five weeks. Any Bedford homeowner who paid for well testing or treatment because of an AGQS exceedance, and who hasn't yet applied for the town's reimbursement, is running out of time to file. If you're mid-transaction right now, whether buying or selling, this is worth a direct conversation rather than an assumption. A seller who installed treatment three years ago and never applied could still recover part of that cost, but not after the deadline passes.
What To Actually Do Before You Sign
The generic statutory notice satisfies the legal requirement. It doesn't satisfy due diligence. Before treating that signature as the end of the conversation:
- Look up the specific address on the NHDES PFAS Sampling Dashboard rather than relying on the boilerplate notice alone.
- If the address falls inside the Consent Decree boundary, ask whether a filtration system or municipal connection was already installed, and request any maintenance records tied to it.
- If the address is outside the boundary and on a private well, ask whether the current owner ever tested for PFAS and, if an exceedance was documented, whether they've applied to Bedford's reimbursement program before the September 30, 2026 window closes.
- Don't assume municipal water service settles the question. Bedford has limited municipal water coverage, and even public systems in the area have shown some contaminant levels in past reporting, so ask which service type applies to a given address before ruling anything out.
- Keep any sampling results or treatment paperwork with the property file. The next buyer will eventually ask the same questions you're asking now.
A Few Questions Worth Asking
Does the new disclosure law require a seller to actually test their water? No. The statute requires notice and a signed acknowledgment, not a test. A seller can comply fully without ever sampling their well.
How do I check whether a specific Bedford address is inside the Consent Decree boundary? Use the NHDES PFAS Sampling Dashboard, which shows the shaded boundary as a map layer along with any submitted sampling results for that location.
If a home already has Saint-Gobain's filtration system installed, is that the end of it? Not necessarily. Sampling under the current work plan is ongoing through 2026, so ask for the property's documented testing history and any maintenance records rather than assuming one installation years ago closed the file.
Is Bedford's town reimbursement program the same as the state PFAS rebate? No. They're separate. The state program is broader and open more widely to private well owners. Bedford's own grant applies only to properties outside the Consent Decree area, covers a specific cost window ending September 30, 2026, and requires a documented exceedance.
Paperwork tells you what the law requires. It rarely tells you what your specific address has already been through, or what's still open to you before a deadline closes. If you're weighing a purchase or a sale in Bedford and want someone who already knows which questions the standard form leaves out, Marianna Vis at Vis Realty International has spent more than two decades working this exact market. Schedule a consultation and bring your address. We'll help you find out which side of the line it's on.
