Mid Hudson Times Sep. 06 2017

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