State health officials on Tuesday blamed the feds for an upstate water-contamination crisis, claiming the Environmental Protection Agency offered "confusing" guidance on drinking-water safety.
Their assessment came in a state Senate hearing on the contamination in Hoosick Falls, a village 35 miles northeast of Albany where a toxic chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, has been found in the water supply.
State and local officials have come under fire for their handling of the crisis, including taking over a year to instruct residents not to drink the tainted water.
"In this case, the EPA made the situation worse by failing to regulate PFOA for 15 years and then changing the recommendations on how to handle PFOA contamination," Commissioner Basil Seggos of the state Department of Environmental Conservation charged.