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Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Air National Guard seeks new system to filter PFOS/PFOA
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
The U.S. Air National Guard is looking
to purchase a new system to remove
perfluorinated chemicals from two
wastewater lagoons located at the Stewart
Air National Guard Base. The lagoons,
located in New Windsor, are designed
to hold wastewater that comes from the
de-icing of aircrafts on the base.
The Air National Guard posted a
request for proposals this month seeking
a “complete turn-key solution for an
industrial wastewater-filtration system”
to treat the wastewater. “The contractor
would be responsible for providing a
short-term rental filtration system that
is capable of removing all PFOA/PFOS
from the industrial waste lagoons to a
non-detectable level,” a listing on the
Federal Business Opportunities website
states.
The RFP stands out in light of
contamination of City of Newburgh
drinking water by perfluorooctane
sulfonate (PFOS) flowing from the air
base property. When asked this month
why the lagoons are treated for PFOS and
The Stewart Air National Guard Base has been filtering PFOS and PFOA out of wastewater
lagoons since 2016.
other perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs)
but a contaminated pond spewing PFOS
into the city’s drinking watershed from
the air base is not, the U.S. Air Force
responded Tuesday to say no one was
available for a comment.
The Air National Guard began filtering
the chemicals from the lagoons in 2016,
shortly after it became known that PFOS
was seeping from the air base and into
the local watershed. State testing showed
the chemical had contaminated nearby
wells in the towns of Newburgh and New
Windsor, and the City of Newburgh’s
drinking water reservoir at Washington
Lake.
The chief source of the contamination
was traced back to Recreation Pond, a
retention pond that accepts runoff from
the airbase, where PFOS-containing fire
foam had been used for years. The pond
empties into Silver Stream, which flows
into the city’s drinking watershed.
The stream also leads to Moodna Creek
in New Windsor, where the Kroll Well
and Beaver Dam Lake were also found to
be contaminated with PFOS, though well
below the EPA’s current health-advisory
level.
“The purpose of the lagoons is to
measure the strength of the chemical
used for de-icing,” said New Windsor
Water Operations Engineer John Egitto,
specifically glycol-based chemicals. “Once
the issue with PFOS became known, the
town decided we needed to include PFOS
as a parameter for testing.”
“We reached out to the Department
of Environmental Conservation to
determine if there were limits to the
PFCs we could accept,” he said. “The DEC
said it would be prudent not to accept any
detectable amount of PFC contaminants.”
Continued on page 4
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