Response tarnishes Cuomo

What the continuing plight of the village of Hoosick Falls and Thursday’s state Democratic primary have in common is the affected public’s pervasive frustration, but that’s not all.

For governor, enrolled New York Democrats have a dismal choice. Either a smart, progressive political newbie with no experience whatsoever running an enterprise as complicated

as New York, or the devil we know, the sitting governor, a slick opportunist with too much experience at pulling the right levers to get his way and with no use for transparency or open government, which is to say, us. Except right now, as voters.

It’s been four years since Hoosick Falls, pop. 3,420, learned a toxic industrial chemical, PFOA, had over decades contaminated the village water supply and a number of private wells. The revealed public health crisis that paralyzed the village and remains a dark cloud over residents’ daily lives at first drew a very poor response from the governor’s administration. It became an American tragedy, the consequence of our industrial past and present, playing out on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s watch. But for some reason the complicated aftermath that’s not entirely flattering doesn’t seem to show up in his self-promotion of upstate accomplishments.

But it’s what real governing is about, for which the governor gets only middling grades. He did at least get a state Superfund site designation for the hot spots, which led to a national designation as well. This will help village attorney David Engel leverage an agreement with polluters Saint-gobain Performance Plastics and Honeywell International for permanent relief for the village. But that will take time, and lots of stuff needs to happen first.

Still, there has been some progress, although frustratingly slow. For Mayor Rob Allen, in office now a year and a half, attempts to push the feds into making PFOA a listed toxic chemical have stalled. So have efforts to get a lower national maximum contamination allowed (MCA) for PFOA. Interestingly, the more hard science looks at the toxicity of PFOA, the lower the proposed MCA. The old federal level was 400 parts per trillion. When EPA regional administrator Judith Enck shut off the contaminated village water, she dropped the detection limit down to 70 ppt. That became the national advisory standard. The latest study from an arm of the federal Center for Disease Control recommends 12 ppt, although unsurprisingly the current Environmental Protection Agency has not acted on it. Allen, with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s assist and proposed legislation, is also trying to get federal help with systematic health monitoring,

crucial to a village that’s getting free blood work from the state but shelling out its own money for follow-up. We need a clean flush in Washington before any of that is likely to happen.

But here, in the Empire State, a year and a half ago Cuomo created a Water Quality Council, designed to offer guidance statewide, on the premise that Hoosick Falls is the start of something much bigger. Which is probably so. But so far, a mandated recommendation for a legally enforceable MCA for PFOA in the state is where? Vermont has one at 20 ppt, New Jersey 14. New York could be the third nationally to set a number. This would be unpopular with industry, but isn’t it the right thing to do for a progressive state? You’d think.

Slowest going of all, from Hoosick Falls’ perspective, is finding an alternative long-term water supply.

Currently, carbon filtration on the existing contaminated system and wells, paid for by Saint-gobain, is working well. Immediate relief, but not a permanent solution, which is proving far trickier and probably far more expensive to find than originally thought. Allen says that “we should be getting a series of options to consider from the DEC by early 2019.”

The fear is that the search for such a source could drag on for years, impacting growth, property values and bringing a host of related negatives. Having spent decades covering the longdelayed dredging of PCB’S in the upper Hudson River by polluter General Electric, I witnessed how upriver communities were held hostage and suffered from the drawn-out process. Time stood still for them. On the other hand, rushing into an acceptable water source for the ages is ill-advised, as near history shows. Already, thanks to the excellent boots-on-the-ground work by Bennington College’s “Understanding PFOA” project, more is known about how much greater the PFOA contamination is from the North Bennington and Hoosick Falls Saintgobain plants than the company had led us to believe, and how the chemistry migrates in various soils for years. What’s been learned will enhance ongoing DEC test drilling information, and certainly affect, and probably limit, the mayor’s options.

Just as an eye-opening public health survey of the village by the same Bennington College project has come up with a lot more signature cancers and serious illness identified with PFOA than a slapdash Cuomo state health department survey of a year ago, which was an insult to the residents. It was dismissive, arrogant, and inaccurate.

So does Hoosick Falls and the primary belong in the same sentence? You tell me.