To the Editor:

One of the things I liked the most about living on McCarthy Road in Winthrop, N.Y. was the fresh well water. Another thing was walking my dog in the evening and seeing the wildlife along the way – rabbits, turtles, frogs, turkeys, etc. and listening to crickets.

In the fall of 2023 and April 2024 I ignored the plowing and planting next door, being busy restoring my house and property that had been destroyed in a fire in October 2022. In August 2024, I began to notice something wrong. Everything was quiet when I walked my dog. No crickets, no frogs, no turtles, no turkeys, few birds, quiet. 

A neighbor got sick, our dogs got sick with diarrhea and vomiting. Another neighbor was suspicious and tested her drinking water out of curiosity and the neighborhood was yanked away from our fairy tales surroundings. Our wells were contaminated with E. coli all along the West Branch of the St. Regis River.

We tried not to panic as we took care of our sick animals. We boiled our water, shocked our wells and searched for labs to test our water at our expense. We contacted various agencies – two town boards, DEC county health department, the farmer involved - with little to no avail.

Fall is here and the farmer is spreading something on the fields next door again. We have no idea what it is or what it was the last two years. We know it made some of us sick and it made our animals sick and many of our wildlife have disappeared. We are wondering what happened to our rights and what will happen since there has been another spreading of fertilizer?, manure? foreign material? poison? this fall. What happens in Spring 2025.

Patricia Arquette
Winthrop