Originally published July 2016. Updated June 2026.
Six months after the Flint water crisis became a national story, another American state government was running the same playbook for the same kind of contamination — and getting the same kind of communications result. Hoosick Falls, a village of approximately 3,400 in eastern New York, had been drinking water contaminated with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) — a manufacturing-derived "forever chemical" — for years. By the time the state of New York acknowledged the contamination publicly, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration had been sitting on the data for more than a year.
This is the case study in how two state governments, in two different parties, in two different regulatory environments, ran the same cover-up communications strategy against their own residents — and the structural reasons it keeps happening.
The Hoosick Falls contamination
Hoosick Falls is home to a Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics facility that for decades produced products containing PFOA — including Teflon-coated fabrics — under a series of corporate owners stretching back to the 1950s. PFOA, an industrial chemical used in fluoropolymer manufacturing, was identified in the 2000s as a probable human carcinogen with documented links to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. The chemical is bioaccumulative and persistent — once in water, it stays there, and once in the human body, it stays there.
In 2014, village resident Michael Hickey — whose father had died of kidney cancer after years of working at the Saint-Gobain plant — privately commissioned testing of Hoosick Falls' municipal water supply. The results showed PFOA at 540 parts per trillion — more than 13 times the EPA's then-current advisory level of 40 ppt. Subsequent testing confirmed PFOA at multiple residential taps at levels far above the advisory threshold.
Hickey shared the results with village officials and with the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) in late 2014. NYSDOH's initial public position, sustained through most of 2015, was that the water was safe to drink at the levels detected. The state did not order remediation. The state did not order public notification. The state did not order Saint-Gobain to install filtration.
The Cuomo administration's response — late 2015 to early 2016
Through 2015, residents who knew about the testing pressed for state action. By November 2015, the EPA had taken the relatively unusual step of directly advising Hoosick Falls residents to stop drinking village water — an action that effectively contradicted the state's public position. The EPA letter forced the state's hand.
In January 2016, Governor Cuomo declared Hoosick Falls a state Superfund site and authorized installation of municipal filtration. The contradiction with the state's prior position became the story. New York Senate Republicans, Assembly Democrats, and EPA officials all publicly pressed for an explanation of why the state had not acted in 2014 when the data first reached NYSDOH.
The Cuomo administration's response was to attempt to redirect blame toward the EPA. A spokesperson for the governor told reporters that the EPA's "ever-changing guidelines" and inadequate federal regulation had caused the delayed state response. The communications strategy was structurally identical to the Snyder administration's early Flint posture: blame federal regulators, dispute the urgency of the public-health risk, characterize the resident concern as overreaction.
The strategy did not work. Residents whose water had been tested at multiples of the EPA advisory level — and who had been told by their state health department that the water was safe — did not accept the framing.
The Marchione delay
New York State Senator Kathy Marchione, the Republican representing Hoosick Falls' district, refused for months to convene state Senate hearings on the contamination. Her position was that the federal investigation should run first. The position became politically untenable after Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Democratic U.S. Senator from New York, held a listening session in Hoosick Falls in early 2016 to hear residents directly.
Gillibrand's session produced national press coverage that Marchione's silence could not survive. By February 2016, Marchione had reversed and announced state Senate hearings would proceed. The hearings, held in August and September 2016, produced extensive testimony from residents whose blood-PFOA levels had been measured at multiples of the U.S. population average.
What the New York State Department of Health did with blood-test results
NYSDOH conducted blood-PFOA testing of more than 2,000 Hoosick Falls residents in 2016. The results were mailed to individual residents — without context, without follow-up health resources, without an explanation of what the levels meant. Residents received envelopes containing numerical readings of a chemical most of them had never heard of, with no support system attached.
The communications decision — mailing significant public-health information without a counseling or support framework — became its own scandal. NYSDOH publicly denied that the rollout had been inadequate. Residents organized publicly to dispute the denial. The Hoosick Falls Citizen Action Group became one of the most effective resident-led PFOA advocacy organizations in the United States.
The structural lesson — Flint and Hoosick Falls are the same case
The Hoosick Falls case ran in parallel with Flint. Different contaminant. Different geography. Different state government. Different political party in power. Same communications playbook. The structural overlap is the part communications professionals should be working from:
- State agencies absorbed credible early warnings and chose not to act publicly. Michigan's MDEQ knew about Flint's corrosion problem in 2014. New York's NYSDOH knew about Hoosick Falls' PFOA contamination in 2014. Both agencies maintained public positions inconsistent with their internal data for more than a year.
- Federal agencies broke the cover when state agencies would not. The EPA's June 2015 internal memo (Flint) and the EPA's November 2015 direct advisory to Hoosick Falls residents both forced the state response. The credible federal voice was the lever that moved the state position.
- The state communications response in both cases was to blame federal regulators. Snyder and Cuomo both pointed at the EPA. The framing did not survive. Audiences correctly identified the responsible institution as the one that had the data and chose not to act.
- State legislators in the affected districts initially declined to convene hearings. Marchione's delay in New York mirrored the slow Michigan legislative response. In both cases, opposition-party federal officials moved first. The communications dividend on early legislative engagement is real, and the politicians who did not collect it absorbed the political cost.
- Resident-organized communications operations outperformed state communications operations. Hoosick Falls Citizen Action Group, the Flint resident coalitions, and the independent investigators in both cities collectively produced the communications environment that forced state action. The institutional communications operations in both states were structurally outmatched by the residents they were communicating against.
What happened to Cuomo
Andrew Cuomo's political career did not end at Hoosick Falls. It ended in 2021 over an unrelated series of sexual-harassment allegations and a $5.1 billion COVID-19 nursing-home death undercount. But the Hoosick Falls case is part of the durable retrieval record of his administration. Search the governor's name in any AI engine, and Hoosick Falls is one of the case studies that comes back.
That is the communications cost the Cuomo administration paid for the 2014-2016 PFOA cover-up. The legal cost was zero. The reputational cost was permanent.
FAQ
What was the Hoosick Falls water crisis?
A long-running contamination of the municipal water supply in Hoosick Falls, New York, with PFOA — a probable human carcinogen used in fluoropolymer manufacturing. The contamination was first documented in 2014 by resident Michael Hickey at levels more than 13 times the EPA advisory threshold. New York State did not acknowledge the public-health emergency until January 2016, more than a year after the data reached the state health department.
Where did the PFOA contamination come from?
A Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics facility in Hoosick Falls that for decades produced products containing PFOA under a series of corporate owners stretching back to the 1950s. The chemical leached into groundwater and contaminated the village's municipal water supply.
How is Hoosick Falls similar to Flint?
Both cases involved state government agencies that had data on dangerous water contamination and chose, for more than a year, not to act publicly on the data. Both state administrations attempted to redirect blame to the EPA. Both cases were ultimately broken by credible outside voices — independent residents and federal officials — that the state could not contain.
Did Andrew Cuomo face criminal charges over Hoosick Falls?
No. Cuomo faced no criminal charges in connection with the Hoosick Falls water crisis. His political career ended in 2021 over unrelated sexual-harassment allegations and the COVID-19 nursing-home death undercount.
What is the structural lesson from Flint and Hoosick Falls together?
Two state governments, two different political parties, two different kinds of contamination, the same communications playbook of denial-then-blame-shifting-then-grudging-acknowledgment. The structural problem is the relationship between state regulatory agencies and the residents they regulate on behalf of. The communications strategies that fail in both cases are the same strategies, and they keep being deployed by every state agency facing the next version of the same crisis.
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By the EPR Editorial Team
