Read the full article from Chris McKenna (Times Herald Record)
“The town of New Windsor is set to get $3.6 million in state funds as reimbursement for the drinking water it has been forced to buy from New York City after the chemical PFAS contaminated its new wells.
Under a pending agreement between the town and the state Department of Conservation, that payment is meant to cover the cost of the water New Windsor has been drawing from the city’s Catskill Aqueduct since May 2019 through May 2022. The reimbursement also applies to any water the town must buy from the neighboring town and city of Newburgh if the aqueduct is temporarily shut down.
New Windsor had to shut down its Butterhill wells in May 2019, less than a year after it began using the $31 million system, after discovering elevated levels of PFAS, a fast-spreading, harmful chemical that had already invaded the city of Newburgh’s reservoir and other water supplies around the U.S.
Both New Windsor’s and Newburgh’s water contamination have been blamed on firefighting foam that was used for decades for training and actual fires at Stewart Airport and Stewart Air National Guard base. The foam and the cancer-causing PFAS it contained is believed to have washed into waterways and seeped into the groundwater.”…