Dutchess County Well-Testing Petition

Four questions:

1. Do you believe there should be mandated private well testing whenever a home is sold?

2. Do you believe that every six years landlords should be required to test the wells that serve their tenants?

3. Do you believe that any wells drilled after Jan. 1, 2006 should be tested?

4. Do you believe that violators of such a law should face fines?

If you do, please sign this petition and send it along to all you know!

Thanks to Denis Callinan of Concerned Residents of East Fishkill for convincing me and many others four years ago back in 2001 on the need for our county to pass such legislation-- along with Dr. Peter Rostenberg of the Fishkill Ridge Caretakers, Debra Hall of Concerned Citizens of Hopewell Junction, and many others since.

The Democratic Caucus is strong and united on this issue-- that our county should not delay on this.

Sadly, as with many other issues, the G.O.P. leadership continues to drag their feet on this issue.

Thankfully, our county's Board of Health recently voted for Dutchess County to implement a law with the four stipulations above-- Republicans should delay no longer in making sure this law is implemented.

[I submitted a resolution on February 15th calling on our for our county to do the same thing the Rockland County Legislature did in early February on this-- (they had to override a veto from their County Executive but did so)]

Please contact our County Executive at 486-2000 and [email protected] on this, and our County Legislature at 486-2100, [email protected], and [email protected] as well.

Thanks!

Joel Tyner
County Legislator, D. #11
Clinton/Rhinebeck
324 Browns Pond Road
Staatsburg, N.Y. 12580
[email protected]
876-2488

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"Water Testing Law is Needed"
[July 10th editorial from the Poughkeepsie Journal]

Dutchess County health officials are not backing down to reluctant lawmakers bent on delaying a critical program that will safeguard local water sources.

The community will benefit from the county Board of Health's no-nonsense position. Lawmakers have stalled on this matter long enough.

Health officials have voted to mandate private well testing whenever a home is sold in Dutchess, effective next year. In addition, every six years, landlords will be required to test wells that serve tenants. And any wells drilled after Jan. 1, 2006, will also have to be tested. Violators will face fines, the amounts of which still have to be determined.

There are plenty of good reasons to make these changes.

* From Hyde Park to East Fishkill, neighborhoods have seen the devastation caused when chemicals get into the ground and wind up in water wells. Undetected, these chemical spills spread, jeopardizing the health of families who continue to drink the water. In fact, hundreds of Dutchess homeowners have discovered their wells have been polluted, either by gasoline or other chemical spills. In some cases, the polluter can't be identified because the spills happened decades ago.

* A mandatory well testing law will not only alert potential homeowners to any problems, it will give health officials important information about trends, about specific locations that might have contaminants spreading underground. Neighbors in these locations would then be notified about nearby water contamination, so they, too, could have their wells checked. In fact, residents shouldn't wait to have their wells tested, considering what is already known about chemical spills in Dutchess.

* Most banks require homebuyers to test wells for bacteria, but not necessarily for other types of potentially harmful contamination. For example, the spills in Dutchess have involved a variety of compounds, including methyl tertiary-butyl ether, a gasoline additive, and PCE, or tetrachloroethylene, a metal degreaser and dry cleaning agent.

* A similar law in New Jersey has proven effective. The New Jersey legislation came about because one county there started a pilot program, much like the Dutchess County Board of Health envisions here. The information enables homebuyers to negotiate remedies with the sellers, such as installing filters to cleanse the water. Earlier this year, Rockland County lawmakers approved a similar law. By joining Rockland, Dutchess will serve as a glowing model for what should become a statewide standard.

* Once water sources are ruined and the contanimation spreads, it's infinitely more expensive to clean up the messes. It's far better to catch these spills earlier. In Dutchess alone, millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to clean up spills and to provide the affected residents with alternative methods of obtaining waters through public-piping systems. In contrast, a comprehensive water testing through a state-certified lab costs anywhere between $350 to $500. That is a small price to pay to protect homes worth $300,000 and upward in Dutchess these days.

Dr. Daniel Miller, in charge of water supply protection in Rockland County, told the Poughkeepsie Journal, "If you look to New Jersey as an example, it hasn't had a tremendous effect on the real estate industry."

Nevertheless, County Executive William Steinhaus, Health Commissioner Michael Caldwell and other key officials have expressed reservations about starting such an ambitious program. The county Board of Health, using its power under the sanitary code, is right to mandate comprehensive testing. Lawmakers and the health commissioner now have great flexibility to set up the testing program in a way that is manageable to buyers and sellers and the county health department.

The county should get to it.

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"Arguing that MTBE does not cause cancer is like saying that cigarettes don't cause cancer. There is absolutely no question that MTBE causes cancer."
-- Dr. Myron A. Mehlman, Ph.D. (former head toxicologist for Mobil Oil Corp. and current Mount Sinai School of Medicine faculty member)
["Ex-Mobil Man: MTBE Causes Cancer" [7/30/00 Exeter News-letter]
http://www.seacoastonline.com/2000news/exeter/e7_30d.htm ]

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This is a list of more than three dozen different stores, restaurants, and other entities across Dutchess County who have had wells that tested at over the level of 10 parts per billion MTBE at some point over the last few years, according to Steve Capowski, Director of Environmental Health for the Dutchess County Health Department last year:

Rhinebeck:

Getty Rt. 9/9G-- 6/04...55 ppb
F & D Mart Inc.-- 9/02...200 ppb

Amenia:

Wassaic TDDSO-- 8/01...11 ppb

Beekman:

Beekman Square Diner-- 12/02...24 ppb
Clove Valley Deli & Cafe-- 12/02....180 ppb
Sunoco Food Market-- 7/01...16 ppb

East Fishkill:

Archway Plaza-- 5/03...490 ppb
East Fishkill Realty, LLC-- 8/03...37 ppb
Gulf & Snack Shop--1/02...5600 ppb
Jake's Tex Mex 6/03...627 ppb

Fishkill:

Convenient Deli Mart-- 10/03...307 ppb
Potluck-- 7/03...73 ppb

Hyde Park:

Citgo Food Mart-- 7/02...55 ppb
Country Plaza DC-- 11/01...12 ppb
Crum Elbow Apartments-- 3/04...39 ppb
Darrows Mobile Park-- 4/04...59 ppb
Dutchess Co. Auto/Consumer-- 12/01...20 ppb
Georgie O's Restaurant-- 12/03...15 ppb
Hidden Brook Estates-- 6/03...54 ppb
Hidden Plaza (Bell Copier)-- 12/03...24 ppb
St. Peter's School-- 2/02...18 ppb
TNT Furniture Strippers-- 7/03...30 ppb
Touch of Naples-- 5/04...12 ppb

LaGrange:

Cinnamon Tree Day Care Center-- 7/01...58 ppb
Merchants Associates-- 2/03...130 ppb
Page Industrial Park-- 5/01...21 ppb
Rt. 55 Mart, Inc.-- 6/04...110 ppb

Pleasant Valley:

Ennis Parc-- 8/04...14 ppb
Family Circle Plaza-- 10/02...20 ppb
Four Brothers Pizza-- 9/02...10 ppb
Gasland Pleasant Valley-- 2/04...36 ppb
Pleasant Valley Chestnut Mart-- 6/04...130 ppb
Rudy's Market II-- 5/03...56 ppb

Stanford:

Cobble Pond Farms-- 2/02...584 ppb

Wappinger:

7-11 Convenient Food Store-- 5/01...35 ppb
Creek Side Plaza-- 12/02...1600 ppb
Dutchess Medical Arts Building-- 7/04...23 ppb
New Hackensack Plaza-- 3/04...31 ppb
Rt. 376 Gulf-- 3/04...690 ppb
Stoetzel Mobile Home Park-- 7/01...23 ppb

Washington:

Mabbettsville Convenience Store-- 3/04...160 ppb
Mabbettsville Dairy Cream-- 6/04...27 ppb
Tuxis Real Estate LLC-- 4/04...200 ppb

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"Legislature Approves Local Law Requiring Well Water Testing In Residential Housing in Rockland County"
http://www.co.rockland.ny.us/Legislature/LNews/02-03-05.htm ]

New City, NY (February 3, 2005) Tuesday, February 1st, the Legislature voted to override the County Executives veto, and in doing so, approved a local law, introduced by Legislator Ellen Jaffee, Chairperson of the Environmental Committee, requiring the testing of well water systems in residential housing in Rockland County.

Legislator Jaffee stated, "The purpose of this law is to protect public health and safety! Well water is an extremely important, affordable and often preferred source of drinking water that needs to be better protected. As elected officials, we have the responsibility and mandate to make good policy to protect the health of children and families in our county. Protecting public health includes protecting its drinking water. "

Upon the signing of a contract of sale for any property served by a private water system within Rockland, the seller will be required to begin the process of testing the well water and obtain written certification from a New York State approved laboratory that their private water system conforms to county water standards. Property sellers would be required to obtain a certified laboratory test of a wide range of contaminants, not just bacteria, and results shared by both parties. The property seller will be required to arrange for and pay the cost of this testing and, within ten days of the contract provide the purchaser with confirmation that the test has been ordered. Within 60 days of ordering the test, the seller and buyer would certify that they have received and reviewed the water test results. The Laboratory must also submit the results directly to the Rockland County Department of Health.

County Landlords would also have to test wells at least once every five years, alert residents of results and remediate problems. New wells would require testing and remediation if necessary before they can be put into use for the first time.

When a homeowner has tested their well as required by this law, prior to offering the property for sale, the results of testing would satisfy the requirements of the law for a period of one year before and after sample collection, provided the filing requirements are satisfied.

Jaffee added, "It will be extremely important to raise awareness of involved parties in real estate transactions -home inspectors and attorneys, and especially realtors, who will be required to inform each seller and buyer of this local law. We will initiate seminars for the public and real estate industry with the Health Department and lab representatives to explain all aspects of the law and to answer questions.

This is important consumer legislation, which provides notice, and protects the public and buyers from degradation of water supplies. We are recommending expansion of information about this law and the importance of well testing on the county web site. In addition, we hope to raise awareness and educate the public about the importance of well registration, regular and ongoing well testing for contaminants and the potential health effects of consuming water from a private well that does not meet public water quality standards."

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"Private Well Law is Tested" [May 2005 Journal News]
by Catherine L. Foley [excerpt]

The law mandates private-well water testing before the sale of any home in Rockland, and requires real estate agents to inform potential sellers and buyers about the law...

Daniel Miller, head of the county Water Supply Bureau, said the Health Department would model regulations on New Jersey's Private Well Testing Act.

New York state does not have a private-well testing law.

Rockland homeowners with private wells wishing to sell their property will be required to pay a certified laboratory to test their water supply for microbial coliform and fecal coliform, or E. coli; volatile organic constituents, including the gasoline additive MTBE; metals, including arsenic, iron, manganese and sodium; and the general chemistry of the water, including pH, nitrate and chloride levels...

If the water is contaminated, the seller must correct the problem, or the buyer must acknowledge in writing that the property was bought with a contaminated water condition and pay to remediate it.

The law requires landlords to test wells every five years. It goes into effect immediately for the sale of new homes with well water; for the sale of existing homes, it will go into effect Aug. 4; and for rentals, it will go into effect Feb. 4.

Up to 9,000 wells exist in the county, the Health Department has estimated.

Brian Cocolicchio of New City told the panel he and many of his neighbors were faced with MTBE contamination of their well water.
"This law is a good one and a really good start to some of the problems we face in terms of water contamination," he said.

Cocolicchio said he would like to see lead included in the metals tested and notification of residents within a quarter-mile radius within 30 days.
George Potanovic of Stony Point said he faced road salt contamination after he bought his property.

"The law will make homeowners much more protective of their water," he said. "The quality of water is intrinsically tied to the value of their property."

Sumber said Realtors support the law's intent. "No one should go into a home without knowing the water quality is pure. How it's implemented is another story."

County Legislator Ellen Jaffee, who sponsored the law, said the law was constitutional.

"Legislative counsel has indicated to me that the law is in compliance with New York state law," the Suffern Democrat said. "I believe this is a good consumer protection law."

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"A Gasoline Additive Lingers In New York's Drinking Water"
by Ian Urbina [New York Times 10/31/2004]
http://www.sierraactivist.org/article.php?sid=45658

Twelve years ago, when a new gasoline additive held the promise of reducing air pollution, New York State made a huge bet that the technology would work. It supported the use of the additive, M.T.B.E., to be mixed with gasoline at some of the highest concentrations in the nation, from 12 to 15 percent, while also allowing the additive to be used in parts of the state where air pollution was less of a problem.
But six years later, when studies began to show that the chemical was a potential carcinogen, state officials realized that by trying to clean the air, they may have seriously damaged the water supply. M.T.B.E. had been leaching into the underground water table from thousands of gas tanks, and now the state has more than 13,000 spills that must be cleaned up, one of the worst cases of drinking-water pollution in the nation, experts say.

As a result, far fewer people have been staying at Annie Scott's bed and breakfast, a two-story Victorian house with a scenic view of the Bear Mountain Bridge on the Hudson here in Orange County. Even though Sunoco installed a purifier in her basement and the company conducts regular testing on her well, Mrs. Scott says the water still smells like turpentine. She refuses to serve it to her guests, drink it herself or give it to her two teenage children.

"We offer bottled water if guests want to brush their teeth, make coffee, or take a drink," said Mrs. Scott, who estimated that she had lost $15,000 worth of business each year since an underground leak in December 1999 at a nearby gas station contaminated local water with M.T.B.E. "We also warn guests about showering, since M.T.B.E. is worse when it vaporizes."

Along with 49 other residents in town whose wells were polluted, Mrs. Scott, 47, filed a lawsuit seeking to force Sunoco, which owned the station, to pay for her loss of income and property value and to help the town build a pipeline to bring water from a nearby reservoir.

Fort Montgomery's situation is like that of towns and cities throughout the state. Last week, a federal court agreed to speed up New York City's $300 million lawsuit against oil refiners for a huge spill in Jamaica, Queens, the lead case in a group of 115 related lawsuits.

"New York is faced with one of the worst M.T.B.E. problems in the country,'' said Senator Charles Schumer, who has taken up the issue along with other lawmakers in Washington. "And the state is not even done counting the number of spills yet."

While New York and other states have banned gasoline with high levels of M.T.B.E., experts say that New York's troubles are a harbinger of a nationwide problem. Roughly half the country draws its water from underground sources like public and private wells or aquifers.

"People seem to be waiting for some major disaster," said Walter L. T. Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, a firm that provides environmental data to environmental consultants and drinking water suppliers. "But the disaster is already here. It just happens to be occurring underground."

M.T.B.E. contamination has been found in the ground water of at least 28 states, and with estimates ranging from $30 billion to $100 billion for a national cleanup, oil companies have argued that they should not be held accountable since the federal government required the use of oxygenate additives.

Last year, the Bush administration supported a $31 billion national energy bill that would have protected the oil companies from having to pay for the cleanup. Republican supporters of the provision said the companies were not responsible for the decision to use the additive.

"The government mandated the utilization of M.T.B.E.," said Jonathan A. Grella, a spokesman for Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, whose Texas district is home to several of the largest M.T.B.E. makers. "Those who produced it were fulfilling this mandate and therefore they deserve protection." Opposition to the provision was one of the principal reasons the energy bill failed.

In New York, at least 20 municipal water providers, including New York City, have pending lawsuits against oil companies seeking their help in cleaning up M.T.B.E. pollution. More than 150 such lawsuits are pending nationwide, Mr. Hang said.

When tanks leak or trucks spill, gasoline often seeps into the ground, and since most of its ingredients, like benzene, toluene and xylene, are insoluble, the gasoline puddles on top of the water table and evaporates. But M.T.B.E. - methyl tertiary butyl ether - dissolves quickly into water, which is one of the reasons it was popular when, in 1992, the federal government ordered oil companies to add an "oxygenate" to gasoline to make it burn cleaner.

In 1998, having realized the potential damage, New York state officials introduced some of the strictest drinking water standards and cleanup requirements in the country. Experts say that cleanup efforts in the state have been slow, however, because regulators have tended to remove only leaking tanks, often leaving the spilled chemicals to continue leaking through the ground.

Many water officials say the pollution could have been prevented.

"There are reams of documents indicating that oil companies knew the dangers of M.T.B.E., but these companies opted to use M.T.B.E. because it was the cheapest," said Paul J. Granger, the superintendent of the Plainview water system, which serves about 35,000 people on Long Island. Mr. Granger's water district is suing Exxon/Mobil and Shell, whose spills, he said, have polluted his district's ground water with 2,000 times the allowable M.T.B.E. level.

With 3.3 million residents, Long Island has the largest population in the country that depends on a single underground aquifer. Plainview's ground water makes up a section of the larger underground aquifer, but its contamination has not yet spread.

"We just don't have the money to clean up their mess on our own," Mr. Granger said. He added that it would cost $390 million to $1 billion, based on New York State Health Department estimates, to put filters on the 130 wells in Plainview that have been contaminated.

In 1998, the federal government tried to reduce the risk of gasoline leaks by requiring that all faulty underground tanks be upgraded or removed. Older tanks were typically made of a single layer of steel that often corroded and leaked after about 25 years. Newer tanks are double-walled steel.

Mr. Hang said that the biggest part of the problem in New York had been the state's approach to cleanups. Rather than removing all the contamination, regulators often just removed the faulty tank and a limited amount of the surrounding dirt. As a result, there are more than 6,000 sites where the state, having conducted partial cleanups, has administratively closed the file on the site even though pollution in the ground is still seeping toward the ground water.

A spokeswoman for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Maureen Wren, did not respond to questions about cleanup methods, but she said that the state was taking ambitious steps to deal with the M.T.B.E. problem. It banned the additive this year, she said, and is providing incentives to municipalities and companies for cleanup.

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Also see:

Dutchess County Board of Health's sanitary code changes: http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Health/HDArticle28.pdf

May 11th post to MidHudsonAlliance.com on this
http://midhudsonalliance.com/node/180

"Is There Gas in Your Glass?" [Fall 1998 Bluewater Network]
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/fall98/eia_fall98bluewater.html

Judge Shira Scheindlin recent decision in Manhattan's Federal District Court
http://press.arrivenet.com/gov/article.php/625441.html

"What Oil Companies Knew and When They Knew It" by Environmental Working Group
http://www.ewg.org/reports/withknowledge/index.php

"Communities That Have Filed MTBE Lawsuits Against Oil Companies" by Environmental Working Group
http://www.ewg.org/reports/oilandwater/lawsuits.php