The House oversight chairman is blasting the head of the Environmental Protection Agency for allowing a dangerous water contamination problem to spiral out of control in New York for nearly a year before the agency took action.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter sent to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy late Wednesday that he wants to know “how and why” the residents of Hoosick Falls were not warned of a deadly carcinogen in their water supply even after the agency was made aware of the problem.
Chaffetz also is going after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, citing documents that show his administration knew of the contamination for months, but chose not to take action, even after the EPA had said the levels of a cancer-causing substance were dangerously high.
Chaffetz said the committee’s records show that the EPA knew about the contamination since December 2014 and did nothing in response until November 2015. He said it wasn’t until a local lawyer raised the matter with a senior EPA official that the agency got involved and began warning residents.
He said the committee wants to understand why EPA “failed to remediate the health crisis in Hoosick Falls as soon as possible” and is requesting all documents, emails and communications since May 1, 2014, on the situation to be turned over to the committee by July 20.
The water crisis in Hoosick Falls has risen in the news in recent weeks when the cancer-causing substance known as PFOA was found at strikingly high levels in blood tests on residents.
Chaffetz wants Cuomo to provide all documents and communications to help the committee understand how and why state and local officials delayed acknowledging the contamination in Hoosick Falls “and continued to provide the public with false and confusing information.”
“It raises serious questions that the county and state would continue to assure residents the water was safe to drink even though the federal government had already warned residents to the contrary,” Chaffetz stated in the letter to Cuomo sent Wednesday.
The New York crisis follows last year’s water crisis in Flint, Mich., over dangerous levels of lead in the city’s drinking water. The EPA also failed to advise residents there.
