Introducing: Safe to Drink

February 12, 2026·34 min·2 clips

A Merrimack widow at the town meeting: I don't know if I killed my husband.

Bear Brook host Jason Moon introduces a new investigative series from New Hampshire Public Radio's Document team called Safe to Drink, hosted by Mara Hoplamazian. Episode one opens with Ben Pierce, who moved his family to Londonderry in 2019 and one day finds a pallet of about 2,700 gallons of bottled water in his driveway with no note. Chasing the delivery driver, he learns his tap water is contaminated and unsafe to drink or cook with. The Pierces stop using their faucets, drying dishes carefully and teaching their kids Kinsey and Parker not to brush their teeth from the tap. Six years later they still cannot use the water. The story rewinds to March 2016 in Merrimack, one town over, where a packed school gym hears state officials announce that perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA, has been detected in the public drinking water. State epidemiologist Dr. Ben Chan walks through possible health effects including cholesterol, thyroid, immune function and kidney cancer, but says studies are unclear and PFOA is an emerging contaminant. Officials cannot say what level is safe, yet still tell the public the water is okay to drink. The local Saint-Gobain coated-fabrics plant, formerly ChemFab, used PFOA in manufacturing and was the one that first reported contamination after testing its own taps. Saint-Gobain initially blames a local landfill. Resident Lorene Allen, watching the meeting on local TV, is angered by what she hears as patronizing answers and starts researching late at night. Wendy Thomas, a mother of six who previously fought a gas pipeline, joins her after a library meeting and tests her own well, getting 40 parts per trillion despite living three miles from the plant. The episode explains the unit: a part per trillion is roughly a droplet in 20 Olympic pools or one second in 31,546 years. PFOA bioaccumulates, building up like a clogged bathtub. The EPA in 2016 shifts guidance from 400 to 70 parts per trillion, while Vermont uses 20. Some Merrimack private wells test at 190, 360, even 820 parts per trillion. Saint-Gobain agrees to fund bottled water for homes over EPA guidance. The town shuts down its highest-testing public wells but tells residents the public supply is safe. Town councilors warn Lorene not to use the word contamination, calling her group hysterical women and fearmongers. The episode closes by hinting that the same drama had already played out, almost identically, in another town a hundred miles away, where another local woman named Lorene became the activist.

As heard by us

A careful, uneasy investigation into contaminated water, official uncertainty, and families forced to make daily choices without clear answers.

A New Hampshire town's water scare gets the Bear Brook treatment: patient, unnerving, and fixed on the gap between official reassurance and what families can actually live with.

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Why you'd press play

Officials say most people can still drink the water. The families getting sick are not so sure.

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