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Newburgh officials continue demand for answers about contaminated water

Nov 14, 2018 12:00 pm
MidHudsonNews [dot] com is reporting a meeting will be held Thu., Nov. 15, involving top Department of Defense officials about the city of Newburgh's contaminated water supply. City officials were not consulted about the session and will not be participating. City Manager Michael Ciaravino said he hopes the session is not “another PR” effort. “The city did not organize the event, the city was not invited to attend, the city was not even consulted in scheduling the date, the time, the place or the manner of the event,” city attorney Michelle Kelson said. He said any city official attending the event will be there seeking information, not providing it. The water contamination with carcinogenic PFOS and PFOA chemicals originates at the New York Air National Guard Base at Stewart Airport and years after the issue surfaced, there has been no action, noted Ciaravino. In a related story, MidHudsonNews [dot] com is reporting Newburgh's contaminated water problem may go back decades before the PFOS issue surfaced, back when Stewart Airport was an Air Force base in World War II. Drums of chemicals were reportedly buried there for years, and an individual in the early 1990s identified radiation levels near some leaking drums in a dump area at the base. If there was radioactive material buried there years and years ago, Ciaravino said he is confident that installing a granulated carbon filtration system at Washington Lake will not filter it out. Newburgh officials are currently demanding the federal government stop the flow of contaminated streams from entering the Washington Lake reservoir and for the watershed contamination to be remediated. The city has been getting its water for more than a year from the New York City Catskill Aqueduct, paid for by the state. Read both stories at MidHudsonNews [dot] com.