Merrimack Valley Company That Sold Tainted Water Will Close

HAVERHILL, MA — A Haverhill farm that has been family-owned for 117 years will shut down its spring water distribution business. Spring Hill Dairy Farm has been under fire for allowing bottles of spring water with high levels of toxic chemicals to remain on store shelves, arguing that the water was within federal guidelines for so-called "forever chemicals." The water is sold under the store brands of several retailers, including Whole Foods, CVS, Stop & Shop, Market Basket and Roche Brothers.

This week, the Massachusetts Department of Health said Spring Hill was removing gallon jugs of its product from store shelves. But the decision to remove those products came more than a month after testing found elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, or PFAs, and issued a warning to pregnant women, nursing mothers, and infants to not use the water.

Spring Hill has 30 employees. On Friday, one of Spring Hill's owners sent a letter to customers saying it would stop producing the water. The letter by Harold Rogers noted he was a fourth-generation owner in the family business that has operated in Haverhill for 117 years.

"The deluge of unwarranted attention on our company, when PFAS is clearly a national problem with thousands of contributors, has made it impossible for us to keep operating," Harold Rogers, one of the owners of the company, wrote in a letter to his customers Friday. "There have been many challenges over the years to doing business in Massachusetts. This past month has convinced us that, for our company, the negatives have come to outweigh the positives."

While the company still has a notice on its Website Saturday noting that the water falls within federal guidelines for PFA levels, state officials told The Boston Globe that Spring Hill agreed to voluntarily recall all water produced before July 22, when it installed a new filtration system.