C-8 Committee Presents “No Confidence” Letter to Town Board
By Alex Brooks
At the Petersburgh Town Board meeting on April 16, Petersburgh’s C-8 committee presented to the Town Board a “letter of no confidence. The letter aggressively criticized the Town Board and its attorneys for failing to represent the Town’s interests adequately in discussions with Taconic and New York State about PFOA contamination of the Petersburgh area.
The letter began by noting that last summer the Town Board supported and approved the C-8 Committee as an advisor to the Town Board on issues related to PFOA contamination. The letter asserts that Taconic has failed to pay more than $50,000 of the Town’s reimbursement request for PFOA-related expenses, and faults the Town Board and its attorneys for not doing enough to collect those funds, and for misleading the public about the extent of the unpaid reimbursements.
It also cites a failure to organize periodic blood screenings to monitor levels of PFOA in the blood of Town residents, and failure to “pursue responsible advocacy” for a timely agreement between DEC and Taconic on a Remedial Investigation Work Plan as reasons for its “no confidence” letter. As it happened, DEC approved Taconic’s Remedial Investigation Work Plan that very day.
The letter also takes great exception to a sentence in Supervisor Webster’s letter to DEC Commissioner Seggos, which asked for information about the feasibility of long-term carbon treatment of the Town’s existing water supplies in addition to a study of the feasibility of developing an alternative water source. The C-8 Committee apparently took this to mean that the Town Board is prepared to consider continued use of the GAC filters on the Town Water System and POETs on individual wells as a viable permanent solution to PFOA contamination, and they found it “grossly offensive” that the Board would contemplate such a solution that “endangers the public health.” The letter concluded that these statements and actions suggest complicity with Taconic in “trying to minimize its future financial obligations” from the PFOA contamination.
Heinz Noeding read the letter to the Board on behalf of the C-8 Committee, and he said that several local residents had signed the letter. Noeding said after the meeting that the C-8 Committee meets once a month, usually with about ten residents present.
Town Supervisor Alan Webster was clearly upset by the allegations of negligence and complicity contained in the letter, but he said he did not want to respond in anger. He did, however, tell this reporter after the meeting that $74,650 has been received from Taconic from a total reimbursement request of about $98,000, and the Town is continuing to try to collect the remainder. Noeding disputes these figures, based on documents he received by making a request from the Town for information about this under the State’s Freedom of Information Law (The Eastwick Press will seek to clarify these facts in a subsequent article).
Concerning the sentence in his letter to the DEC Commissioner in which he asks for information about continuing carbon treatment of the Town’s existing water supplies and its companion issue of repairs and improvements to the municipal water system, Webster said he would love to see the Water District get access to an uncontaminated water source, but until that happens he is focused on making sure the existing system continues to provide clean drinking water. Webster said, “I worry about long-term operation and maintenance of any system we get,” whether it be a new well connected to the water plant by miles of pipe, or the complicated filtration system now being elaborated in the water plant. He said he wants to make sure that in either case the Water District has the resources to maintain its system in good repair, which is clearly going to be a bigger job than it has been in the past.
But he added that he understands why people feel as they do about finding an uncontaminated water source, and he doesn’t blame them for expressing those feelings vigorously.