Understanding what's really in Duxbury's well water

A 12-well town, mid-transition

Duxbury draws its drinking water from twelve gravel-packed groundwater wells at eight well sites around town — Tremont Street, Mayflower, Evergreen Street, Damon, Millbrook, Lakeshore Drive, Partridge Road, and Depot Street — plus a purchased-water connection from the Town of Marshfield that supplies roughly 150 homes in the Gurnet Road / Duxbury Beach neighborhood.

This isn't a "nothing to see here" groundwater town. PFAS was first detected at levels above the Massachusetts state standard in the Partridge Road well in 2021, which the town shut down. Since then, PFAS testing across the rest of the system has turned up a more complicated picture: most active wells now blend to comply with the state's combined 20 ppt PFAS6 standard, but several individual wells — and the Marshfield-supplied water — test above the newer, stricter federal 4 ppt individual PFOA/PFOS limit that takes full effect later this decade.

Sources: Duxbury Water & Sewer Department reporting; Duxbury Clipper and South Shore News reporting on Water and Sewer Advisory Board data, 2026. See the full breakdown on the Water data page.