T IMES
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION FIRST-PLACE AWARD FOR GENERAL EXCELLENCE, 2016
MID
HUDSON
Vol. 29, No 36
3
SEPTEMBER 6 - 12, 2017
3
ONE DOLLAR
Gardiner
celebrates
the harvest Goldbacks
crush
Kingston
Page 18 Page 40
SERVING NEWBURGH AND NEW WINDSOR
What’s the effect of PFOS exposure? DEP delays
Department of Health to conduct on-line survey of city residents
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
The New York State Department of
Health has launched an online survey
to study the effects of exposure to
perfluorinated chemicals such as
perfluorooctane
sulfonate
(PFOS).
The City of Newburgh and two other
communities have been chosen to take
part in the study.
Survey questions ask if participants
drank city water and for how long. The
survey also asks about known health
conditions and the length of time
participants have had these conditions.
The DOH will use results of the survey
to study the “prevalence of various health
conditions in each impacted community.”
Survey responses will be kept confidential.
The survey was launched a little more
than a year following the discovery of
PFOS contamination in City of Newburgh
drinking water and water bodies
throughout the city’s drinking watershed.
Testing by the state Department of
Environmental Conservation revealed the
contamination came from the Stewart
Air National Guard Base, where PFOS-
containing fire foam was used for decades
in training drills and fires.
The DOH conducted a year-long,
regionwide blood testing program,
which provided participants with
information on their blood levels of
Continued on page 2
Summer vacation winds down
10-week
shutdown
of Catskill
Aqueduct
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
The New York City Department of
Environmental Protection has delayed
a ten-week shutdown of the Catskill
Aqueduct until next year. The shutdown
was planned to carry out needed cleaning
and rehabilitation.
The shutdown was scheduled for next
month, said DEP spokesman Adam
Bosch, but was pushed back until
October, 2018.
Bosch described the project as “tricky”
to design. “We are cleaning about 59
miles of the aqueduct, and we are also
replacing valves inside the aqueduct that
are more than 100 years old,” Bosch
wrote in an email last week.
“The design of that work was delayed
a bit, and we could not get it all finished
in time for a full shutdown in 2017. We
expect to have ten-week shutdowns in
2018, 2019 and 2020.”
However, the aqueduct will shut down
for about a week for regular inspections
sometime this fall, said Bosch. “This is
not out of the ordinary,” he wrote. “It
is fairly typical for DEP to shut down
the Catskill Aqueduct for a week or two
in the fall. Before we do this, we always
reach out to the 74 communities that are
Continued on page 4
Continued on page 2
Delano Hitch Park was the scene of the annual City of Newburgh International Festival held over Labor Day weekend.
WWW.MIDHUDSONTIMES.COM