City could wait decades for non-contaminated waterway | Tomorrow's headlines tonight

I'm with journalist Nico Balcaran. He is with the Hudson Valley Times and he is going to be talking about PFAS contamination. This is going on in Newburgh here in New York. And PFAS, it's basically an acronym. It stands for what it represents, man-made synthetic chemicals. What we call forever chemicals. You know, people have heard That term, many times, they don't easily break down. They're found in things like nonstick cookware, Teflon, makeup, food packaging, waterproof clothes, etc. So, we have you, Nico. Can you hear me okay? This is Linda Schmidt. Hi, Linda. Yes, I can hear you. All right. First of all, thank you so much. I really do appreciate you joining us. This is a brand new segment that we have. We launched it about, I think it was about two weeks ago, but it's tomorrow's headlines tonight so that people can get a jump. On what is being talked about, what stories are being talked about in newspapers and online, which will appear maybe in the paper tomorrow, but we are getting a jump on that. So first of all, before we get into your story, talk to me about how long you have been with the Hudson Valley Times. You know, what's your gig there? What do you normally cover? Talk to me a little bit about that. So I just recently joined back in August, actually, and this happened to be one of the first stories that came across my desk. I am essentially just a local journalist, the primary reporter covering pretty much everything from arts and entertainment to Business stories, every local news article that I can produce, I try to cover. So now you're talking to me about, wait a minute, you're new there? When did you join? In August, yeah. August, okay. And where did you come from? I graduated from grad school, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism last December. And I was freelancing in Norwalk, Connecticut before. No kidding. I used to live in Norwalk and work there as well. So I'm very familiar with that area. So do you have a specialty that you report on? Or are you general assignment? Like, I'm a general assignment. I do a lot of investigative stuff as well in my career here, but it falls under general assignment. So what about you? Yeah, I'm a general assignment reporter for the Mid-Hudson Times. Okay. So now this story comes across your desk. How did it come across your desk? Did somebody shoot you a text? Did they send you an email? Did your boss say, hey, we were notified about this through somebody I know. We need you to look into it. Talk to me about that process. Yeah, it actually came in through an email, a press release from Riverkeeper, one of the local organizations here. In the Hudson Valley that they're an environmental organization, and they sent me an email saying that, hey, the Department of Defense has pushed the cleanup data for the PFAS at Stewart Air National Base to 2051. Would you like to talk to one of our experts about this? And having just moved here at the time, I'm confused. There's a water contamination going on here in Newburgh. It was literally like maybe two days after I moved up here. And so I did some research, started talking to some of the experts at River Keeper and just realized what a rabbit hole this entire contamination has been for residents here. Okay. Now, when you talk about a rabbit hole, go into more detail for me about that, if you would. And Newburgh, by the way, is in Orange County, for some of our viewers who are not aware or maybe did not know that. So talk to me about what the big concern is there. Is there a problem with the drinking water, bathing water? What are we talking about here? It was primarily the drinking water, but I should preface and say that currently our drinking water and everything that all the water that we get out our tap is perfectly okay to use. So back in 2013, Thank Basically, Newberg took part in a Department of Environment, an EPA program, essentially, to test public water systems for unregulated contaminants. And that's when they discovered you. PFOS, P-F-O-S, which is one of the chemicals in the PFAS family. In 2015, the city put together reports and their annual water quality reports. And in 2016, the then Governor Cuomo, he essentially created a water quality rapid response team to do an investigation into the water here at Washington Lake. They discovered the PFAS contamination and it originated from the Stewart Air National Guard base. And there was a drinking water emergency by the then city manager, Michael Surarovino. And then Newberg stopped drawing water from Washington Lake and temporarily switched to their backup, Brown's Pond. And then quickly after that in June, the city switched to the Catskill Aqueduct, which remains the drinking water source currently. So Newburgh residents are not drinking contaminated water at all because we switched our water sources. So wait a second, Nico. Were they ever drinking contaminated water? Was there ever a risk of that? For a bit before the report came out. What's that? In 2014, 2015, before the report come out, and then everything started to happen really fast. And they switched as soon as they were alerted to these chemicals, the city switched over to its backup and then switched over to the Castile aqueduct. Okay, and I just wanna reiterate here, we're talking about- Forever chemicals, those are two words that people hear a lot now, so like the general public understands, ah, forever chemical, a chemical that's in the water, it doesn't go away, and these are really hard to break down in nature, and if you ingest them, they can be extremely damaging, but you're talking about it coming from the Stewart Air National Guard base, which is very common for the contamination to be spread from a military base, from a landfill. Airports, I was reading about, industrial sites, and it's very easy for these forever chemicals to then seep into the soil and eventually the water. So talk to me about what happened, because, you know, I'm a reporter too, so I have my process, but I always like to hear about other people. Like, what were you thinking initially? Who did you contact right away? And then where did that lead you? So initially, after talking with Riverkeeper, one of the scientists there, Dan Shapley, I started to do some more research and discover various organizations here in Newburgh, like the Newburgh Clean Water Project. There I talked to some of the leaders there. They've been trying to get the community involved through a number of events. There was a. It's actually a community day for clean water where they did a procession telling the history of the water here in Newburgh. And yeah, and that is how I started to just talk to people involved with what's happening here in the residence to learn more about this. And then talk to me too about the feds because you had to reach out to the federal government. So who did you reach out to? What are they telling you about this? Essentially the government has been quite mum on this. There is a restoration advisory board that was formed a couple years ago. Where residents and along with the sewer international, the Air Force, they're part of this board where they essentially try to update each other on what's happening. And for the last one that I joined, the big issue was the pushback date to 2051 for this cleanup. And so they share information through that. But I have not been able to reach out to get in contact with anyone there despite email and calling, nothing. Nothing, okay, and who is it? What federal group is this? Where you're not getting any response from? The Air National Guard. Okay, the Air National Guard, they're not getting back to you about any of this as well. So any other federal officials that you have spoken to regarding this? No, I have not. I have spoken to some. Department of Environmental Sciences and local advocacy groups, essentially. So what are the advocacy groups telling you? Because I know Riverkeeper. I've done many interviews with them in the course of my career here. Other than Riverkeeper, what are some other advocacy groups telling you? And what about residents that you go out and you talk to? Because, you know, drinking water in this country, everybody thinks, oh, of course the drinking water is great. There's no problem with the drinking water. And then occasionally you hear these type of stories where, yeah, guess what? Chemicals leaked into your drinking water. And there have been some major cases in recent decades about things like that happening. So what are the residents saying to you? And what are the advocacy groups saying to you? They're essentially feeling betrayed by the government, by everyone involved. They are saying, how can we trust anything that they're saying? And with the pushback they're saying, Are you taking this seriously, essentially? Are you compromising our lives? Because there are long-term health effects due to exposure. There are certain cancers, increased cholesterol, developmental effects that can happen because of PFAS. People are even distrustful of the current water supply that we have here, even though it's completely clean. And Essentially community advocates are calling for greater accountability, See, um. health monitoring and trying to get the cleanup to be more timely. Because pushing it back to 2051 means the fight essentially falls on the shoulders of another generation. Exactly right, another generation. So why did they come up with this 2051 date? What was your reaction when you heard them say, yeah, the final completion, 2051? It's almost 2057. I should be clear. The final completion for the cleanup is not 2051. It's essentially the final cleanup plan they will have ready. By 2051. Whoa, hold on a second. So the final cleanup isn't even done by 2051. It's just their plan to clean this up will be ready by 2051. That's mind-boggling. What did you think when you said, did they tell you that over the phone? Or did they write it in an email or a text? What happened there? So this was where I came in with my very first article about the story that Riverkeeper sent me. Essentially, the people here, the residents here found out through the news that there's gonna be a pushback to 2051. And then the restoration advisory board meeting was scheduled with the article that's currently on the screen. The Restoration Advisory Board, their representatives, federal representatives, clarified that cleanup date. I can't recall off the top of my head the exact phrase that they used, but essentially, they're rolling through a process, and they're hoping to get that plan in by 2051. But they're saying they're moving forward, essentially. And yeah, it's quite mind-boggling that it's going to be another almost 25 years before we get a plan for cleanup. A plan for cleanup. And the water area that we're talking about is Washington Lake, right? Yes, Washington Lake. And that's not being used for drinking water or anything else. Officials have confirmed that for you, right? Yes, it's not being used for anything else. Okay, so the area that they got to clean up, they got to clean up that water as well as they got to clean up what's going on at Stewart Air National Guard Base, because obviously some of these forever chemicals leaked into the soil and then made their way to the waterway there to Washington Lake, right? Yes, right now there are currently building, there are different instruments that are helping to... Clean up everything. It's not going at full capacity. There are filtration systems that are handling runoff, but the filtration systems cannot keep up with the amount of water that we experience. So, um... There is, for example, just this summer, we had heavy rainfall and the system that's currently running could just could not keep up with the amounts of rain that was happening. So there was some runoff that was happening there. My goodness. And Nico, what are the city officials saying to you? I mean, because the mayor. And between now and 2051, there will likely be multiple different mayors. But what is the mayor, what is city council saying? Have you spoken to these people and what's their reaction? So one of the city council members, his name is Ronald Zarrillo. He is also on the restoration advisory board. And he has been very vocal, all the city council members have been very vocal about this pushback. And Council Member Zarella, he is especially, he has been one of the ones who's like an environmental advocate. Okay. And one of the things that he's worried about is our water, drinking water source from the Catskills Aqueduct is being subsidized by New York State. And one of the things that has residents worried and him is what if We suddenly are not gonna be able to subsidize the water anymore. Newburgh is gonna have to find the money to pay for drinking water when we had a source that was free. Now, how big of an area do you guys service with your paper? How many subscribers do you have? What's the population there in Newburgh? I've been to Newburgh many times, but I don't know what the population is. So what are we talking about? Honestly, I can't tell you that myself, but we do serve the town of Newburgh, the city of Newburgh, and New Windsor, which they're pretty sizable cities and towns. Yeah, and look, what you're doing here is extremely important, and you are a young journalist. This is your second job, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. So what do you think as a young, cause I've been doing this here at Fox five for 33 years. So as a new journalist, you're in your second job, what did you think when you started looking into this topic and discovering, my gosh, this is what goes on with the government. This is what happens. This is what's putting, you know, possibly people at risk. What went through your mind? What were you thinking about all that? One of the things that... It was just off the top of my head as I recalled Flint, Michigan, which a couple years ago, it was all over the news. And I thought that that's not going to happen again, that the government is going to be responsible. They're going to try to clean up the water system. Awesome. We're not gonna get another Flint essentially, but that is what's happening all across the country, not just here in Newburgh and in more towns here in the Hudson Valley and in New York. And it's just like an epidemic that's all over the country and it's like the government is just failing its people. And they need to be held accountable. And it's one of the reasons why I got into journalism is to make sure residents and people know what's happening. Because if they know what's happening, then they can do something, they can organize. Nico, it's so funny that you say that, because that's the main reason I got into journalism myself, is to be able to help people, right? We have this innate desire to be able to fix the wrong, to correct injustices, and to, like, protect people and help them, right? That's what your gut is with this. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Hey, well, listen, thank you so much.