NORTH BENNINGTON, Vt. — Above the Walloomsac River, where ramshackle farmhouses sit just downhill from tidy homes with organic gardens out back, the old ChemFab plant was, for many, a respected local employer from the days when this village’s prosperity depended on industry.

For others, it was an eyesore and a nuisance, its smokestacks choking their homes with an acrid smell that seemed to cause headaches, sore throats and nosebleeds. But since the plant shut down more than a dozen years ago, few had given a thought to its environmental legacy.

In recent weeks, however, several private wells near the ChemFab plant have tested positive for an industrial chemical that has been linked to cancer, thyroid disease and serious complications during pregnancy, making North Bennington — better known for its bed-and-breakfasts and Bennington College — the latest in a growing list of Northeastern communities unsettled by a contaminated-water scare.

It started across the New York border in the village of Hoosick Falls, where the discovery of the chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the public drinking water has prompted residents to rely on bottled water amid charges that the state took far too long to respond. It was found in public wells in Petersburgh, N.Y., the site of a plastics factory south of Hoosick Falls.