WASHINGTON – One day after US Senator Charles Schumer said he pushed Defense Secretary Mattis to clean up the PFOS contamination of Newburgh’s water from the Stewart Air National Guard Base, Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (D, Ny-18) said he is confident the Department of Defense will pay for the remediation.
Maloney addressed the issue during a telephone town hall meeting Wednesday night.
The DoD has said it will conduct its own studies of the contamination before making a decision. The congressman appeared confident that in the end, the feds will take care of the problem.
“We have gotten the site you are talking about declared a superfund site,” Maloney said. “We are going to get DoD to pay for the cleanup; that is taking some time but it is going to happen. It’s not going to come on the backs of Newburgh; that’s very important.”
For the past year, Newburgh has been getting its drinking water from the New York City aqueduct. There is a concern that streams leading from the Guard base and eventually running to the Hudson River contain PFOS contamination.
