NEW WINDSOR – Standing
by the temporary filtration plant put up months ago along Union Avenue
by Washington Lake, normally the Newburgh’s primary water supply,
US Senator Charles Schumer accused the Department of Defense of “using
every trick in the book to avoid paying for a problem they caused.”
The senator acknowledged that when the military began using the chemical,
PFOS, commonly used in firefighting foam, the long-term effect was not
known. That doesn’t absolve the DoD of responsibility for coming
up with a solution.
That’s not happening, said the senator.
“DoD, USAF, you made the mess, now you clean it up and stop playing
games and kick the can down the road.”
Schumer, along with New York’s other Senator, Kirstin Gillibrand
and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, have urged the DoD to immediately install
carbon filtration units at the site of the contamination at the nearby
Stewart Air National Guard Base in order to halt the continued discharge
of contaminated water into Silver Stream. He has also pushed for including
surrounding streams and waterways, including Washington Lake to the DoD’s
draft remediation work plan.
For now, the city is getting its water from the New York City aqueduct.
City Manager Michael Ciaravino said they are okay, for now.
“But that luxury isn’t going to last forever and at the end
of the day, we’re going to be expected to blend back to Washington
Lake,” he said. The original projection is sometime in the fall.
Ciaravino said a lot must be done before then because the PFOS level is
many times higher than originally feared. Instead of about 4,000 parts
per trillion, they are now being told it is in the hundreds of thousands
per trillion.
