Fishkill Water Problem Could Cost Millions
By Michael Boyajian
The tiny Village of Fishkill (population 1,700) is a tenuous link supplying water to over 50,000 people spread out over places that include the Town of Fishkill, Beacon, Philipstown and Cold spring. Now the village aquifer is threatened by the construction of 200 mobile home units three feet over the aquifer’s water table resulting in contamination by pesticides, radiator fluid, motor oil and fertilizer.
Now a FOIL request (Freedom of Information Law) made to the New York State Department of Health reveals that a remedial water plan is in place that will draw more water from the village sending it to the Merritt Park section of the Town of Fishkill and the Shenandoah section of East Fishkill where wells have been contaminated by IBM with Perchloroethylene (PCE) and Trichloroethylene (TCE) and that residents there rely on point of entry water purification systems in their homes to supply their essential water needs.
Now East Fishkill residents worry that the fresh water from the village will be contaminated by the mobile home development leading some residents of the Superfund location to say, “Please don’t poison me twice.”
If the Village of Fishkill aquifer should be contaminated then two things will happen over 50,000 residents will have their lives changed forever and someone is going to get rich installing point of entry water purification systems. Systems for the entire area would run into the millions of dollars and these systems are not 100% fool proof and is the reason culprit IBM paid $10 million for the water connection to the village. The cost for a central system would run even higher with one for the single town of Bedford in Westchester considered to cost $26 million.
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