The City of Dover, N.H., has been honored with the 2026 Source Sustainability Award, a top award from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES), for several innovative projects that are bolstering and protecting the City’s drinking water supplies.
One of these projects is the recent installation of an artificial aquifer recharge (AR) system, which started operations in April and withdraws water from the Bellamy River when river flows are greater than needed to meet the needs of the local ecosystem. The AR system pumps water into basins that promote the infiltration of water into the Pudding Hill Aquifer, while simultaneously augmenting the municipal water supplies[JA2.1] with recharge and establishing a groundwater barrier that restricts the migration of PFAS, 1,4-dioxane, methyl tert-butyl ether (MtBE), and other volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in groundwater emanating from the site of a former automobile recycling facility and historical landfill.
NHDES has honored Dover with the 2026 Source Sustainability Award for the combination of this AR project along with the construction of a treatment system to address PFAS and other contaminants, and the Willand Pond Production Well Project, which added 500,000 to 850,000 gallons per day of water to the municipal supply.
Dover’s is only the second AR system operating in the Granite State, after the successful deployment of AR in Durham, N.H. in 2016 that serves the town and the University of New Hampshire. Both the Dover and Durham projects were designed, installed, tested, and permitted by Emery & Garrett Groundwater Investigations (EGGI) Inc. (a division of GZA GeoEnvironmental) and Underwood Engineers Inc.
