Diane Duffus has lived in Stanford for 30 years. Along with most of her neighbors, the retired science teacher gets her drinking water from a private well in her backyard, drilled 169 feet into the aquifer — shallower than the average local 404-foot depth. She has a whole-house water filter and an extra filtration unit under her kitchen sink.
“Like other homeowners, I hadn’t tested my water for many, many years, so I did the basic tests with a lab in early March,” Duffus said. The results revealed coliform bacteria — a common sign of fecal contamination — so she immediately installed an ultraviolet light system to mitigate the issue.
When New York launched a free toxic chemical screening initiative for private wells later that month, Duffus decided to participate. The results, which arrived by mail in mid-June, showed that her well water tested positive for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS, a subtype of PFAS), at 17 parts per trillion (ppt) — well above the state’s public drinking water standard of 10 ppt.
Duffus is among the first Dutchess County residents to discover contamination through New York’s new $9 million Private Well PFAS Testing and Mitigation Rebate Pilot Program. Launched in March, the initiative aims to track infiltration of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in six of the state’s most vulnerable, groundwater-dependent counties: Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Suffolk, Ulster, and Westchester. In addition to free testing, the program offers rebates to help residents address any positive findings — a vital step because exposure to these chemicals has been linked to cancer and other health risks.
The data will be used to guide future state support and remediation efforts. Dutchess County was selected for the pilot due to its unique combination of high population density and heavy reliance on its more than 30,000 unregulated private wells.
The overwhelming number of initial applicants forced the state Department of Health to pause the program for three months. Stanfordville resident Tony Jones participated in the second round of testing when the program reopened in July. Jones, a member of the town’s Water Quality Committee, said he was curious to see if his well water was positive for PFAS “in a rural environment in the middle of nowhere.”
His water tested positive for PFOS and another variant, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid): Both levels were well within the current state safety limit of 10 ppt, at 1.8, although environmental experts set the ideal health goal at zero. Jones has not yet taken any special mitigation steps.
Mary Beth Bianconi, a partner at Delaware Engineering and an expert in land use and New York environmental regulations, said in an email to the Herald that residents shouldn’t be overly concerned: “Stanford’s land use history, geology and hydrogeology do not indicate that there are likely sources of significant contamination that would cause concern for human health and the environment.”
Courtesy the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Because cheaper, over-the-counter test strips do not reliably detect PFAS, New York’s pilot program offers direct help to participants by covering professional laboratory mail-in analysis, which can cost as much as $500 per sample. (Duffus enlisted Aqua Check Laboratories in Rhinebeck to test her well water.) If private well water tests at or above 10 ppt, eligible participants can receive rebates of up to $5,000 for a residential water treatment system or up to $10,000 to connect to a public water main.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that if used properly, Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) filters can be 99% effective at removing PFAS. Other equally effective (but more expensive) filtration systems include ion exchange resin systems and reverse osmosis. Costs vary from $1,000 to $2,000 for whole-house carbon filtration, an estimated $3,000 for ion exchange, and an average of $7,000 for reverse osmosis.
PFAS are a family of nearly 15,000 chemicals — including common variants like PFOS and PFOA — manufactured since the 1940s to resist heat, water, oil, and stains. They are found in pesticides and industrial waste, as well as everyday products ranging from nonstick cookware and fast-food wrappers to water-proof mascara and guitar strings. Because these chemicals do not easily break down, they accumulate indefinitely in the environment and have been detected in the blood of roughly 97% of Americans.
According to the United States Geological Survey, PFAS contamination in rural areas often starts on the ground when agricultural pesticides or fertilizers (biosolids) — made from human waste, land fill runoff, and industrial wastewater — sit in the soil. When it rains, these chemicals seep down into the aquifer, an underground layer of rock and sediment that stores the area’s groundwater. Because PFAS don’t break down easily, they can accumulate into long drifting trails, or plumes, that may travel miles from the original pollution source. While PFAS molecules have soap-like properties that cause them to stick to the moist surfaces of soil particles, they easily dissolve and spread throughout the underlying water table, making nearby residential wells highly susceptible to drawing from these moving toxic plumes.
The health risks tied to PFAS exposure are well-documented and far-reaching. Dozens of peer-reviewed studies show that PFOS and PFOA, two of the most widely used chemicals in this class, can increase the risk of kidney, testicular, and prostate cancers and disrupt hormone production, including insulin. They are also linked to infertility, low birth weight, and childhood developmental delays.
Despite growing evidence of health hazards from “forever chemicals,” federal officials have weakened clean water protections. On May 18, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced a major rollback of federal safeguards. While the new proposal retains the strict 4 ppt limits established in April 2024 specifically for PFOA and PFOS, it rescinds safety limits for four common PFAS variants, and extends water utilities cleanup deadlines for these two compounds from 2029 to 2031. Zeldin said that the previous administration rushed the regulatory process, leaving the initial standards vulnerable to legal challenges.
The State Legislature passed Senate Bill S3207A in June, which set strict 4 ppt safety limits (down from 10 ppt) for PFAS in public drinking water. (Private wells are not legally regulated by either federal or state governments.) The bill currently awaits Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature. New York has banned PFAS in menstrual products and apparel, and is working to extend these restrictions to cookware and other household items.
Some local officials are stepping in directly to protect residents and their drinking water. Stanford Town Supervisor Julia Descoteaux recently chaired a workshop on rural well water, presented by the town’s Water Quality Committee and Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County. “Our community wants to understand groundwater and take ownership of their wells,” she said. “Workshops like this can educate private well owners about testing their drinking water, mitigating any positive findings, and help them be cognizant of their property’s ecosystem.”
Dennis Wedlick, chair of the committee, expressed mixed feelings about the state’s PFAS screening initiative. “I was surprised by the pilot program,” he said. “It provides such great incentives to test water; however, for the state to so quickly invest that much money without consulting with local communities first is problematic.” Wedlick said the only way to obtain comprehensive information about PFAS contamination would be to conduct a townwide test.
“Last year, our Stanford community applied for state funding to conduct tests of this nature, but unfortunately, we were denied,” he said. Wedlick explained that the town had hoped to compare the new data to results from 20 years prior, when local groundwater was found to be of the highest quality. “It’s an example of how there is not enough direct communication between the state and municipalities.” Wedlick, who lives less than 2 miles from Duffus, said his well recently tested negative for PFAS.
Bianconi, who participated in the workshop, said in her email, “The best practices for homeowners in Stanford to protect groundwater (and thus drinking water quality) is to know where your well and septic are, ensure proper maintenance of septics, manage manure and fertilizers carefully around well heads, and deploy GAC or other point-of-use treatment as needed.”
After receiving her positive results, Duffus upgraded to a whole-house GAC filter.
Reflecting on the state’s initiative, Duffus said that detecting PFAS in private well water is only a first step. “We need to demand that these harmful chemicals, proven to cause cancer, be banned in our country,” she said. “It starts by making people aware of the issues in the first place.”