SOURCE:
https://nysfocus.com/2026/09/08/new-york-toxic-chemicals-water-systems
By Shuchi Shah, Hayden Betts, Aurora Martínez and Rebecca McCray - September 8, 2026
Mary Fontana doesn’t trust the water that comes out of the tap in her upstate New York home. Nor do most of her neighbors in Tupper Lake, an Adirondacks village where she is mayor.
“When I’m putting my kid in the bathtub at the end of the night, when the tub fills up with rust-colored water, it’s really hard to look at that and not think that you’re doing some kind of harm,” said Fontana, who has pushed the state for help cleaning up her village’s water.
Many of Tupper Lake’s roughly 5,000 residents are wary of drinking the village’s water straight from the tap. It is tainted with a toxic disinfectant and has long violated state safety standards, though it’s officially deemed acceptable to use. And Tupper Lake is far from alone.
A NYCity News Service and New York Focus analysis of 2024 state Department of Health data, the latest available, found that 79 public water systems across the state have water contaminated with toxins exceeding state limits.
These water systems serve more than 575,000 New Yorkers, from wealthy Long Island suburbs to working-class upstate towns, though the state notes that some water recorded as contaminated may not be delivered to customers.
In 2020, the health department set maximum acceptable levels for the industrial solvent 1,4-dioxane and PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.” These toxins joined 10 others listed as drinking water contaminants, including arsenic, radioactive radium and uranium.
New York ranks among the states with the highest number of contaminants in its tap water. Many communities are trying to improve the quality of their water, spending millions of dollars to shut contaminated wells, build new treatment facilities, and find cleaner water sources.
But these solutions often take longer than allowed to fix the problems. State regulators have granted deferrals that let violations persist as long as public water districts are making progress, records show. And it’s not always clear who should be held accountable for the cleanup.
Governor Kathy Hochul launched a five-year $3.75 billion commitment to water infrastructure as part of this year’s budget, bringing total such investments to nearly $10 billion since 2017.
“New York is committed to removing health disparities [through] targeted funding for underserved communities so that we may all be afforded the basic right to safe drinking water,” the department said in a statement.
Fontana regularly hears about how the problem affects Tupper Lake residents. Many residents have turned to stocking up on bottled water and buying expensive home filtration systems, Fontana said. Some even avoid giving tap water to their pets.
“It’s devastating to this community,” she said. “It’s very difficult to go through the day without somebody talking about the water situation in the community, and this has been ongoing for many, many, many years.”
NYCity News Service and New York Focus reported on seven communities grappling with contaminated water. Use the interactive map in the link to read their stories.
Long Island · Nassau County - Garden City Park and Franklin Square
Served: 38,000 across two districts
Contaminant: PFOS — forever chemicals
A 2019 study from the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a non-profit focusing on tracking water quality in New York State, found that Long Island had “by far” the most contaminated water in the state.
Much of the problem traces to an underground aquifer contaminated over decades by discharge from manufacturing plants.
“Everything we pour on the surface eventually seeps down and contaminates the underground water supply,” said Adrienne Esposito, director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment. “So it’s really way more vulnerable and susceptible to contamination than many, many, many other areas.”
Water in some parts of Long Island is contaminated by PFAS, chemicals which were once used in everything from nonstick cookware to firefighting foam to food packaging. Now mostly banned in some states, they’re known as “forever chemicals,” because they remain in the environment and in the human body without breaking down. Studies have linked PFAS exposure to increased cancer risk and developmental problems in children.
New York State began systematically tracking PFOS and PFOA, two of the most common PFAS compounds, in 2021. The data revealed problems in parts of Long Island.
The Garden City Park Water District and the Franklin Square Water District — two neighboring systems serving a combined 38,000 people — both had untreated water that exceeded state PFOS limits between 2020 and 2024, according to state health department data.
John Hughes, the superintendent of the Franklin Square Water District, said his district has “never pumped out any water that was over the limit” since at least 2020, when New York instituted a PFOS cap. Franklin Square has had granulated carbon filtration systems on some of its wells since the 1990s, according to Hughes.
While Garden City Park did not respond to requests for comment, its 2022 Water Quality Report indicates that it installed a granulated carbon filtration system the same year that the water it served to customers dipped below the state PFOS limit.
Granulated carbon filters cost between $1 million and $1.5 million per system, Esposito said.
“Most water districts want to be in compliance, but the filtration is expensive,” she said. “The water districts used to get very angry with us [for our activism], but then they realized, you know, we’re the ones lobbying for their grants.”
In 2020, New York established maximum contaminant levels for PFOA, PFOS, and 1,4-dioxane. As of August 2026, four water districts — all in Nassau County — have been granted “exemptions” by the Department of Health, buying them another year to come into compliance. A spokesperson for the agency told New York Focus that an exemption “does not absolve the water suppliers of their responsibility to mitigate their systems,” and that each exemption includes a “mandatory compliance strategy.”