Read the full article by Lana Bellamy (Times Union)
“The federal delegation representing the Newburgh and New Windsor area is pushing the U.S. Department of Defense to expedite the years-long cleanup of toxic chemicals that ran off the Stewart Air National Guard base and leached into Newburgh’s former drinking water source.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan wrote a letter in November to Bill Meyer, the restoration program manager at the National Guard Bureau, urging the defense department to take additional interim measures to address ongoing runoff of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS, from the base while the greater process to clean up the state Superfund site continues.
Some of those measures, which were recommended by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health, include increasing the capacity of an interim stormwater treatment system that is currently ineffective during wet weather and slip-lining stormwater pipes.
‘Everything we want to achieve is centered around getting that filter to work in all weather conditions,’ said Dan Shapley, senior director of advocacy, policy and planning at Riverkeeper.
The interim stormwater treatment system, installed at the base by the Air National Guard, has reduced the spread of PFAS into the surrounding areas. But its treatment capacity is limited, the lawmakers noted in the letter, and was never designed to completely solve the problem. Designing a larger filter or adding a storage tank could help it handle the load when it rains.
Slip-lining, a common practice used to stop groundwater from flowing into buried pipes, could help prevent PFAS-contaminated groundwater from entering stormwater pipes and reduce the overall volume of water that has to be treated, the lawmakers wrote.
PFAS chemicals, more specifically PFOA and PFOS, were found at dangerously high levels in Newburgh’s primary drinking water source, Washington Lake, in 2016 when federal regulations placed tighter restrictions on the presence of the toxic chemicals. After the discovery, the city of Newburgh quickly quickly raised the alarm and changed drinking water sources. It now takes water from the Catskill Aqueduct, which the state has paid for, and Brown’s Pond, a local reservoir.
PFOS and PFOA are part of the PFAS family, which contains thousands of toxic and environmentally persistent manmade chemicals. They are known for breaking down slowly over time and are commonly used in a wide range of industrial processes. They can be found in many everyday consumer items, including food, and have been linked to harmful health effects in people and animals. Though it has been known for years that exposure to PFAS is harmful, researchers still do not fully understand how to remove them from drinking water, the full extent of how harmful they are to humans, how much people are exposed to the chemicals and how to better and more efficiently detect them in the air, water, soil, fish and wildlife, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Studies linked the contamination in Newburgh’s water to the use of firefighting foam at the Stewart Air National Guard base, located just outside Newburgh in New Windsor.
‘The years are marching on,’ Shapley said. ‘There has been data collected and investigations started with new names. Some of that is legitimate — Superfund cleanups take a long time to get all the data you need to do the comprehensive cleanup — but we’re at a stage where we know of some things that should be done and we want to make sure they start to happen to reduce or eliminate the flow of PFAS off the base.’
This latest push coincides with a new campaign to ratchet up public pressure on the federal government by Riverkeeper, the Newburgh Clean Water Project, the NAACP Newburgh-Highland Falls chapter, Quassaick Creek Watershed Alliance and the Restoration Advisory Board, a committee of government leaders, advocates and community leaders that help guide the cleanup process.
‘This is a state Superfund site, but the DEC has just not had the leverage to tell the Air National Guard what to do,’ Shapley said. ‘And the Air National Guard is marching along its own path sort of informed by the DEC, informed by the Restoration Advisory Board, but there’s no one who can point and say, “Do this now.”’
Shapley said he believes the goal should be to clean up Washington Lake enough so that Newburgh and surrounding communities can one day draw from it again, but city of Newburgh leaders have not appeared to be in a hurry to return to it, considering the dragged-out remediation process.
‘Our call to the Department of Defense is clear: expedite the PFAS cleanup and implement new measures to help protect our waterways from the ongoing threat of this pollution spreading,’ Schumer said in a statement. ‘From day one, I’ve pushed DoD’s top brass to clean up the Air National Guard’s mess at Stewart and we need more meaningful action to restore health, safety, and peace of mind to nearby Orange County residents in Newburgh and New Windsor.’”