Many Questions Still Need Answers Regarding PV Fire Dept. Dumping

Thanks again to intrepid reporter Abby Luby and The Examiner for investigating and publishing last week’s article about the Putnam Valley Fire Department environmental lawsuit. (“Putnam Valley Fire Dept. Files Show Cause Order for Illegal Dumping”)

I have been politically active in Putnam Valley for many years, and in my opinion, this catastrophe is by far the biggest scandal in the history of the town. Never before have we seen such blatant corruption exposed in our local government institutions including the Town Board, the fire department and other agencies that are charged with protecting public health, safety and taxpayer money.

It is a total disgrace that not one elected or appointed official who was in office for the last seven years has had the courage or the integrity to do something about the crimes that were being committed less than a mile from Town Hall.

Meanwhile, the various town boards who administered the yearly budgets just kept handing over millions to the fire department to do with as they pleased, no questions asked.

As I read through the surprisingly few comments on social media, the main questions seem to be why was a private contractor allowed to dump thousands of tons of contaminated fill on fire department property and who was responsible?  Sadly, we will never know the full story as the only firefighter mentioned in the court papers, Charlie Milo, recently passed away.

There is no way that one person who did not even sit on the Board of Directors would have been allowed to make such an important decision on his own. There had to be other department members involved. Who were they and why aren’t they being brought to account for what they did? And why bring the lawsuit now, so many years after the fact?

Now that all of this is out in the open, I would hope that the Town Board will do what they should have done years ago and sue the fire department to get restitution for the taxpayers who shelled out over $2 million for the remediation. For example, under the CERCLA or Superfund law, the fire department has absolute liability as the property owner for allowing the dumping and resulting environmental damage. There are other state and federal statutes that could provide the basis for such actions just as we see in the lawsuits that were filed by the school district and the fire department itself.

That being said, I doubt that the elected officials will do anything unless they are forced to do so by a higher authority like the state attorney general or comptroller. The town’s emergency services are a powerful voting block that no politician wants to mess with. Which is probably why the fire department has been able to escape the consequences of their actions thus far. At the very least, the Town Board should demand a detailed accounting of every penny that’s given to the fire department at budget time.

I will be sending these articles to the comptroller, the inspector general, the attorney general and any other agency that has jurisdiction to do an investigation and/or audit of the dumping and remediation. It’s long past time for some taxpayer justice.

Patty Villanova
Putnam Valley

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