There’s been a whirlwind of activity in the first few days of Mike Boms’ administration in Hurley. Whether it’s all good depends on whom you ask.
In the waning days of Melinda McKnight’s time as supervisor, Boms’ inquiries led to the overflow of the leachate collection system, resulting in a violation notice from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Boms said he reached out to the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency to resume pumping the leachate holding tanks and it was treated. The pumping had been handled by a private company, which then took it to the City of Kingston’s wastewater treatment plant.
McKnight and former deputy supervisor Peter Humphries explained the private company was allowed to pump the tanks out whenever an automated alarm system notified the town the tanks were full.
Boms claimed that now that the DEC has declared the former landfill a state Superfund site the state’s approval was needed for the tanks to be pumped and for Kingston to accept the leachate.
Kingston treatment-plant director Alan Winchell said he would accept the leachate only after receiving results of PFOA and PFOS tests. Once he received those results, he stopped allowing the leachate.
“All I did was forward the latest test results to Alan Winchell,” Boms said in an email chain among McKnight, Humphries, the rest of the town board and DEC officials. “If by me forwarding the test results of PFOA and PFOS resulted in Kingston wastewater treatment not accepting our leachate, I have a question to ask. The latest test results I forwarded were taken in November 2022. If those test results were the cause for refusal of our leachate yesterday, why wasn’t Alan Winchell notified 13 months ago when the test results became available to the supervisor?”
Humphries said what is in the monitoring wells and what is in the tanks are not the same thing,
“The incoming supervisor circumvented those of us who have managed the system responsibly for the past two years,” McKnight said in a December 29 email. “His actions resulted in the sudden refusal this morning of Kingston wastewater to accept wastewater from the Town of Hurley on the Friday before a Holiday weekend. His hubris created the situation that resulted in the overflow.”
She had tried that afternoon to have an emergency pumpout performed by a company that would haul the leachate to a facility outside the county that would accept it. “I and my team will not be held responsible for the mess created by Mr. Boms,” she wrote.
During the town-board organizational meeting January 4, Boms said the Kingston treatment plant was now accepting the leachate. “I got a phone call yesterday [January 3] from Kingston wastewater,” he said. “After discussion with the DEC, they are now accepting our leachate. I went up to the leachate field the other day, and the pumps are working fine.”
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