Posted on August 3, 2017
By Brendan J. Lyons, timesunion
A manufacturing plant in Hoosick Falls that has been the focus of the contamination of the village’s water supply has been designated a federal Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The declaration allows federal resources to be used to help clean up areas in the village contaminated with a man-made chemical that polluted public and private water supplies. The Superfund designation also means the federal government will simultaneously seek reimbursement and assistance from any companies found responsible for the pollution.
The federal Superfund designation after New York officials last year declared the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant in the village of Hoosick Falls a state Superfund site. That designation allowed the state to list perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, a toxic chemical that has been found in elevated levels in the village’s water supply, as a hazardous substance.
U.S senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles E. Schumer had urged the EPA to list Saint-Gobain’s McCaffrey Street plant as a federal Superfund site.
The EPA said groundwater that supplies the village’s water treatment plant is contaminated with PFOA and also vinyl chloride and dichloroethylene.
“PFOA does not break down easily and therefore is very persistent in the environment,” the agency said in an announcement last year announcing that it had added Hoosick Falls to its list of the nation’s most contaminated sites. “Its toxicity and persistence in the environment can pose adverse effects to human health and the environment.”
The state Superfund designation allowed state agencies to investigate the extent of contamination and begin remediation. But the federal Superfund declaration elevates the government response, including the weight of a federal cleanup program that has been in place for more than 30 years and led to cleanups of severely polluted sites around the country, including dredging PCBs from the Hudson River.
Elevated levels of PFOA were discovered in the village’s water system in 2014 by Michael Hickey, a former village trustee whose father died of cancer. Hickey sent water samples to a Canadian lab that reported levels of PFOA that the EPA later said are not safe for human consumption.
Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics and Honeywell International, which acquired a company that previously operated the McCaffrey Street plant, are reviewing a state Department of Environmental Conservation engineering report on potential alternate water supplies for the village, including a farm along the Hoosic River a mile south of the village’s water treatment plant.
The state spent months evaluating multiple sites in and around the village, including an aquifer on farmland owned by Hoosick town Councilman Jeffrey Wysocki off Route 22, across from the Hoosick Falls Central School District campus. The state tested the farm’s well field and said the results indicated the water in that area is free of the toxic chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, that was discovered in the village’s water supply three years ago.
“Hoosick Falls residents need all hands on deck — and especially the EPA’s Superfund status — to hold accountable Saint-Gobain who created this PFOA mess and force them to clean up the pollution,” Sen Charles Schumer said. “I am glad that EPA has heeded our call to add this site to the Superfund list, because it gives the EPA leverage to make the polluters pay and to set a protocol for investigation and clean-up.”
Source: timesunion
