HOOSICK FALLS, N.Y. — Many residents were angered on Thursday night after a meeting on the proposed settlement between the village and two companies deemed responsible for PFOA contamination was abruptly canceled.
Mayor David Borge explained that a Village Board member was absent due to a sudden family emergency and, in order to have the full board in attendance, the meeting would be postponed until Monday.
But residents expressed outrage over the last-minute postponement, shouting at officials from the floor and demanding the opportunity for public comment. The meeting was adjourned only a few minutes after it began. It was rescheduled to Monday at 6 p.m. in the HAYC3 Armory.
The latest agreement, if approved, would have Honeywell International and Saint Gobain Performance Plastics split a $1.045 million payment to the municipality for expenses related to PFOA. Known as perfluorooctanoic acid or C8, the toxic, man-made industrial chemical formerly used to make Teflon-coated products was found in drinking water supplies. An $850,000 draft agreement was met with much criticism during a public meeting with residents last month.
Resident Michele Baker, after the meeting, said the new agreement is worse than the old one. Her and others questioned why the village was accepting a settlement and expressed officials are moving too fast when the full extent of the contamination is not known.
Borge, who is not seeking reelection next month, has called the settlement “unprecedented.”
“Our priority from the beginning has been to ensure residents do not bear the brunt of a situation they didn’t create,” he said in a statement this week.
An agenda distributed at the meeting included, under old business, a discussion on whether to accept the agreement; the reading of a resolution; and a motion to approve the resolution and authorize the mayor to sign the agreement. It also included a role call vote.
Environmental and health experts and advocacy groups have urged village officeholders to turn down the settlement between the multinational companies.
Judith Enck, a Rensselaer County resident who led the regional office of the EPA from 2009 until her resignation in January, in an open letter to Borge this week, said the village would receive a “completely inadequate amount of money” and said it was “not in the public interest.”
Howard Freed, a physician and former director of the state Environmental Health Center, wrote in a letter to Borge that other communities have received more for similar damages.
“The agreement is, in my opinion, so very favorable to the polluters and so very unfavorable to the people of Hoosick Falls that, if signed, it may even hold Hoosick Falls up for ridicule as a national example of what not to do,” Freed wrote.
Representatives of two advocacy groups called the settlement “paltry.” A letter to Borge on Thursday was signed by Elizabeth Moran, water and natural resources associate with the Environmental Advocates of New York, and Alex Beauchamp, northeast region director for Food and Water Watch.
“The proposed agreement sells the village and its residents short, sets a poor precedent for other communities facing similar crises, and is not something to rush into as your term expires,” the letter stated.
The letter noted PFOA has also been found in nearby Petersburgh and Bennington, Vt. and states that many people fear there will be other communities that discover PFOA or another “unregulated contaminant” in their water supply. They groups wrote the village of about 7,000 people “is patient zero for water contamination crises in New York,” that the agreement should set “a high bar for communities everywhere” and argues the amount is too small and that taxpayers could be left to pick up the tab.
