ALBANY – The state departments
of Environmental Conservation and Health are going to connect 20 additional
private residential wells in the towns of Newburgh and New Windsor to
municipal water systems.
The health department has been sampling private drinking water wells in
areas near Washington Lake, the City of Newburgh’s reservoir, that
are potentially contaminated by the carcinogenic chemicals PFOA and PFOS
from the Stewart Air National Guard Base. Of those 51 private wells sampled
to date, 26 had low-level detections of those chemicals; no well samples
were above the US EPA’s health advisory level for PFOA and PFOS
of 70 parts per trillion.
Given the close proximity of those wells to the Guard Base, which has
been declared a state Superfund site, Albany will reimburse the two towns
for costs associated with connecting homes with private wells impacted
by PFOA and PFOS to the municipal systems. Previously, the state paid
for six other residences to be connected to the two town water systems.
The state is also constructing a high-tech granulated carbon filtration
system at Washington Lake to clean up the reservoir, which was shut off
as the City of Newburgh’s water source last spring.
The Department of Defense is also conducting its own studies about the
cleanup of the Guard base, but local elected officials would like the
military to speed up that process.
