T IMES
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION FIRST-PLACE AWARD FOR GENERAL EXCELLENCE, 2016
MID
HUDSON
Vol. 29, No 17
3
APRIL 26 - MAY 2, 2017
3
ONE DOLLAR
Lady
Goldbacks
battle
Page 34
SERVING NEWBURGH AND NEW WINDSOR
Making Newburgh beautiful
Safe Harbors holds 7th annual Newburgh Community Cleanup
S pecial R eport :
N ewburgh ’ s T ainted W ater
Contaminants
at the air base
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
T
Shantal Riley
Father Ignatius Shin and volunteers scour South Street on Newburgh Community Cleanup day Saturday.
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
Father Ignatius Shin of St. Mary of
the Assumption Friary led a group of
a half dozen volunteers along South
Street, where they picked the street
clean of garbage and debris on Saturday.
“We want to make Newburgh
beautiful,” he said. “Seeing disorder and
ugliness saps our spiritual joy.”
The work took place on the seventh
annual Newburgh Community Cleanup
day, held by Safe Harbors of the Hudson.
It was also Earth Day, and hundreds
of volunteers fanned out across city
streets, wearing gloves and toting
garbage bags, picking up garbage in an
effort to beautify the city and the planet.
A four-square-block section just east
of Liberty Street near South Street was
spic and span by noontime. Though
periods of rain made some of the
garbage heavy to carry, it didn’t dampen
the spirits of the volunteers.
Antonio Hernandez traveled all the
Continued on page 4
WWW.MIDHUDSONTIMES.COM
he departure drop-off area at
Stewart International Airport was
moderately
The City of
busy on a recent
Newburgh
is slowly
Friday night.
recovering from PFOS
A handful of
contamination of its
backpacked
drinking-water supply
teenagers hung
out in the airport at Washington Lake.
Manufactured in the
waiting area.
U.S. until 2000, the
A JetBlue
chemical was used in
plane landed
Scotchgard products
smoothly from
Fort Lauderdale, and non-stick cookware.
It was also a key
Florida. It was
ingredient in fire foam
followed closely
used at Stewart Air
by an Emirates
National Guard Base,
plane, also from
where the chemical
Florida.
seeped into water
The planes
and soil. Pooling in a
landed close to
stormwater retention
an area of the
pond near the air base,
runway where,
the chemical flowed
in 1996, a FedEx
cargo plane made downhill to pollute the
city’s drinking water.
an emergency
In this series, the
landing after
Mid Hudson Times
a fire erupted
investigates the water
in-flight.
crisis, the ongoing
According
cleanup and the source
to the National
of the pollution at
Transportation
Safety Board, the Stewart Air National
Guard Base.
cargo contained
“radioactive”
materials, and “flammable liquids,
corrosive materials, infectious
substances, materials that were
Continued on page 2