Government can and should protect the people it serves.

Ryan Dunham has not found the protection he deserves from any level of government.

Last May, he heard his 11-year-old daughter scream in the shower.

“I come upstairs and the water’s brown and smells like human excrement. That’s the starting point,” he told us.

Dunham lives in New Scotland just a few hundred feet from Bethlehem’s Vly Creek Reservoir, which supplies drinking water not just to Bethlehem residents but to many New Scotland residents as well.

His family’s water comes from a well on their property. “I love where I live,” he said, describing the view he gets of the Heldebergs in one direction and of the Albany skyline in the other.

Dunham has lived there for 22 years. For the first 21 years, he said, the farmer nearby fertilized his fields with manure. It would smell bad for a day and be no problem.

“Then all of a sudden, they spray biosolids,” he said, “and my well is beyond contaminated, and the smell lingers for weeks and smells like rot and decay and now my neighbors are talking about moving because of the smell.”

Biosolids is a term for sewage sludge that is processed to be used as fertilizer.

Dunham did not sit idle when faced with water contamination. He checked to make sure his septic tank wasn’t the problem — it wasn’t — then called the county health department.

The health department took water samples at his house and on neighboring properties.

Eventually, results showed that water samples from six out of 10 residences came back positive for E.coli.

An Oct. 17, 2024 letter from the Albany County Health Department to Region 4 of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation said, “Based upon the sampling results there appears to be impacts to multiple individual wells from the current and historical land spreading activities. The ACDOH would recommend that these dwelling[s] be provided a public water supply if land spreading is not stopped at the neighboring field.”

This is when we would expect government action to protect Dunham and his neighbors.

The health department, however, has told him it has no enforcement mechanism.

The DEC has told Dunham the nearby farmer has a legal permit to use the biosolids that came from Massachusetts.

The Albany County executive, Daniel McCoy, took some action. On Jan. 27, he issued a 90-day ban on the use of biosolids within the county. We then wrote an editorial on this page supporting the ban but pointing out its limitations.

We cited research from a 2023 Sierra Club paper that indicated “persistent organic compounds, or emerging pollutants, found in pharmaceuticals and personal care products, microplastics, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have the potential to contaminate ground and surface water, and the uptake of these substances from soil amended by the land application of biosolids can result in contamination of food sources.”

Put simply, we Americans are ingesting PFAS, often called “forever chemicals,” and so we are excreting them. If biosolids with PFAS are then applied to farmland as fertilizer, the chemicals can contaminate our food.

Known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally degrade, PFAS are a group of over 9,000 manmade chemicals that are used in the production of all sorts of products, including fast-food packaging, non-stick cookware, clothing, and toilet paper.

Because these chemicals don’t break down well, they can easily accumulate in the environment and build up in the human bloodstream, with the EPA reporting evidence that PFAS can contribute to certain cancers, hormonal imbalances, weakened immune systems, developmental challenges, and more. 

Dunham liked our editorial and reached out to us after which our New Scotland reporter, Sean Mulkerrin, wrote about the frustrations Dunham and his neighbors — all living near Bethlehem’s Vly Creek Reservoir — are still experiencing.

The town of Bethlehem had initially been unaware of the contaminated wells so near its reservoir in New Scotland. After learning about the contamination, the town supervisor, David VanLuven, wrote a letter to residents in February saying testing showed the town’s drinking water was compliant.

The town would also work with the state health department and water experts on technologies to keep municipal water safe, he wrote, and work to ban the use of biosolids in town.

On March 10, Joanne Cunningham, who chairs the county legislature and represents part of Bethlehem, held a press conference to push a bill she introduced after the town of Bethlehem was not immediately informed about the contaminants in New Scotland wells.

The proposed law would set notification standards for Albany County health officials to follow up with local municipalities, the county legislature, and the county executive’s office if the department finds a threat to soil or water.

Since the New Scotland wells were outside the town of Bethlehem, Cunningham explained, there were no state or federal requirements to notify Bethlehem residents.

She also said, “We’ve learned a lot from what Bethlehem just went through … We’re always trying to do things better, learn the lessons.”

We support this bill and urge its passage. Of course all levels of government and health agencies should communicate with one another when public health is at issue. And learning lessons then acting on them to close communication gaps is commendable.

But, much as with the 90-day moratorium on biosolids, this bill does not solve the larger problems.

Neither does a local biosolid ban, which Bethlehem may pursue. As we reported earlier, parts of the Southern Tier, Finger Lakes, and Western New York have been at loggerheads for years with the state over the right to ban the agricultural use of sewage sludge. In the past decade, for example, municipalities in Clinton, Wyoming, and Niagara counties were blocked by the state Department of Agriculture from enforcing similar laws — outcomes that were upheld on appeal.

The ideal solution to the problem would be federal regulation since the source of forever chemicals of course is the manufacturing of products with PFAS in the first place.

We realize that will not happen under the current administration. Lee Zeldin, the new administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency has reframed its purpose from protecting the environment and public health to make the agency’s mission to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”

That increases the necessity for other levels of government to protect public health.

We take some heart from our governor’s response. “The Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that it intends to dismantle vital environmental safeguards is a direct threat to the health of New Yorkers and communities across the country,” said Kathy Hochul in a statement on March 13.

“In response to this outrageous overreach by the federal government, I am directing the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to use its full authority to continue to protect New York’s natural resources and environment, and to block these acts wherever possible.”

This should include stopping the use of sewage sludge for fertilizing fields. Hochul has backed an ambitious plan to recycle 85 percent of all waste in the state — which has a current rate of about 20 percent — by 2050.

A draft report from the EPA that came out in January makes it clear that there are health risks associated with even low levels of PFAS, that 40 types should be tested for, and that the risks of various combinations are not predictable.

“You can’t trace what you don’t even know,” Ryan Dunham correctly observed. We have little hope that important questions will be answered any time soon as the Trump administration plans to eliminate the EPA’s scientific research arm, firing over a thousand toxicologists, chemists, and biologists.

Dunham was also distressed when he was told it would cost $1,000 to test his well water for PFAS, which was “prohibitive.”

What is the worth of a family’s good health?

In 2021, the people of our state added an amendment to New York’s Constitution. These 15 words are simple and powerful:

“Each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”

New York state should follow the lead of other states that ban the use of biosolids as fertilizer.