In Washington, D.C., the federal government shutdown is in its fourth week as Congress has yet to reach a deal on the budget.
In Newburgh, New York, the Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) says the shutdown has furloughed employees at nearby Stewart Air National Guard base whose job it is to handle project approvals and interpret environmental data.
"The contractors are able to continue work, but they're being managed by furloughed employees — and that would stop the work," explains Chuck Thomas, a member of the RAB and Newburgh's Conservation Advisory Council.
Newburgh has gone without its main drinking water source, Washington Lake, for nearly a decade as cleanup efforts continue at the base. Residents were first notified of PFAS in their water — stemming from the use of firefighting foam at Stewart — in 2016. Residents of New Windsor were also impacted. The city has relied on alternative water sources, like Browns Pond and New York City’s Catskill Aqueduct, ever since.
Jennifer Rawlison, also with the RAB and the Newburgh Clean Water Project, says the shutdown comes just as cleanup efforts are starting to gain steam. Currently, she says, contaminated groundwater at the base is being contained and treated with a filter at Recreation Pond, which the U.S. Department of Defense installed in 2019. But she says the filter is frequently overwhelmed by heavy rain, allowing contaminated water to run off the base — at a rate of 1,800 gallons a minute — into the local watershed.
The Air National Guard recently proposed a plan to mitigate this by digging more trenches at the base and improving cracked pipes.
“That was supposed to start in 2026, and our understanding from the Air National Guard is that work on this contract is beginning currently, despite the government shutdown. But that’s all we’ve gotten back from them," says Thomas.
"I have no idea what the chain reaction will be on the end of this," adds Rawlison. "The DoD, what I've learned, is just paper-heavy and very regimented in how they view timelines."
Rawlison says the shutdown has so far put approvals on hold for the next round of ground and water testing. She says it has also held back the RAB specifically by postponing its latest meeting and cancelling an annual “poster board” meeting to update the public on cleanup efforts.
Finally, she says the shutdown has forced the RAB to pause its plans to use a federal grant to hire an environmental consultant to analyze data for the community.
“Which is a bummer, because they would be looking at past data, so we could still be doing what we needed with them — but everything’s on pause there," says Rawlison. "And because that [grant] is only for one year, we don’t know how this now effects the next round of contracts to apply for.”
In a statement to WAMC, the Department of Defense — which President Trump recently renamed the “Department of War” — says it remains committed to addressing PFAS contamination, and that its cleanup timeline is dictated by law via the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. In its response, it also referenced a New York Times article reporting delayed cleanup efforts, adding: “The New York Times fails to mention the 99% completion rate of the initial cleanup investigations at the 723 military installations and National Guard facilities conducting PFAS cleanup actions. The Department will continue to follow the law, work with regulatory agencies, engage with affected communities, and prioritize actions to address cleanup at locations that pose the greatest risk to human health.”
Rawlison and Thomas, who both live in Newburgh, tell WAMC they are worried any long-term delays could derail cleanup efforts altogether, especially given a recent move by the Environmental Protection Agency to postpone compliance deadlines for PFAS limits enacted under the Biden administration last year.
After nearly 10 years, Rawlison says the wait is frustrating.
"Our autonomy is at the heart of all of this," she says. "We didn't do this to ourselves, and now it's sort of like we're really at the behest of their graces."
