Ensminger: “largest polluter”
NEWBURGH – The Campaign for Water Protection in Newburgh Saturday
heard from retired Marine Jerry Ensminger about his ongoing fight with
the Department of Defense (DOD) over water contamination at Camp Lejeune,
and what they can expect when dealing with the feds over water issues.
In the spring of last year, Newburgh’s main reservoir was turned
off because of the discovery of carcinogenic PFOS. Since then, city residents
have been drinking New York City Catskill Aqueduct water.
Ensminger lost his nine-year-old daughter from exposure to Camp Lejeune
water and his 20 year battle with the DOD resulted in the creation of
the 2012 Janey Ensminger Act that mandates medical care be given to the
estimated more than one million individuals affected by exposure from
water contamination at Camp Lejeune.
Ensminger said Newburgh residents might be surprised by the amount of
pollution occurrences the DOD is responsible for across the country.
“Our nation’s largest polluter is not Dow Chemical. It’s
not Monsanto. It’s not DuPont. It’s not Exxon Mobil. It is
the United States Department of Defense,” he said. “The U.S.
Department of Defense is our nation’s largest polluter.
They have more superfund sites than any of those other entities that I
just named, and superfund sites are the worst, of the worst, contamination
sites in our country.”
New York State Assemblyman Frank Skartados (D – Milton), who has
been working alongside other Newburgh representatives to battle the PFOS
contamination issue, said he hopes that the DOD will begin taking financial
responsibility for the damages incurred in Newburgh sooner, rather than
later.
“We already have the State of New York for almost a year now paying
$125,000 a month, for example, to supply clean water from the aqueduct
to the people of Newburgh.
Along with that expense the state has been footing the bill for blood
testing and filtration infrastructure.
“We want to recoup that. The federal government has a responsibility;
they should accept the fact that they are culpable for what has happened
here and they should do the right thing,” he said.
Ensminger found that it is not so easy to get the DOD to do that. He said
in the case of Camp Lejeune, the water contamination had gone unchecked
for some 30 years, and for some of that time the contamination was acknowledged
by the DOD, but they never acted upon it.
Ensiminger’s advice to the people of Newburgh was that, “Nobody
is going to fight this for them. They’re going to have to fight
it themselves and they need to get organized, and they do not need to
accept ‘no’ for an answer and to get their politicians involved.”
