Clean-Up

Can It Be Cleaned Up?

Knowing what to test for helps us choose better ways to care for our families’ water and shared soil. Golf-course pesticide questions and airport-lead questions need different tests and responses. Establish what is present before choosing treatment or restoration; proximity alone does not establish contamination.

Test first. Match the response.

Use complete application records and relevant environmental information to select laboratory tests with qualified help. Match drinking-water treatment to the contaminants found, with certification for those substances and a maintenance plan. Soil cleanup needs professional assessment. Lead is an element: mushrooms and plants do not destroy it, and pesticide-remediation findings are not evidence of lead removal.

Fair waterways

Cleaning water, especially well water

A private well is not covered by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act: the owner is responsible for its safety. The CDC Well Water Safety guide recommends proper construction and continued maintenance, and its testing guidelines advise testing well water at least once a year for total coliform bacteria, nitrates, total dissolved solids and pH, and more often after a change in taste, color or odor, after a flood, or after work on the well.
Match the treatment to the contaminant found. The CDC well-water treatment guidelines and the EPA’s Protect Your Home’s Water guidance both say to choose a device certified for the specific substance in your test results, installed and maintained as its manual requires.
The main household treatment types (EPA Drinking Water Technologies): activated carbon filters reduce many pesticides and other organic chemicals but not nitrate or most metals; reverse osmosis reduces nitrate, arsenic, dissolved solids and some PFAS; distillation and ion exchange address dissolved contaminants; ultraviolet light disinfects bacteria and viruses but removes no chemicals.
Buy certified, not advertised. The NSF contaminant guide and the NSF certified-unit search list devices tested against NSF/ANSI Standard 53 (health-effect contaminants such as lead), Standard 58 (reverse osmosis) and Protocol P473 (PFAS), each for named substances.
Boiling kills germs but does not remove pesticides, nitrate, lead or PFAS, and can concentrate chemicals left behind. Boil only for a known microbial problem; use certified treatment for chemicals.
Keep the well itself clean: a sanitary cap above grade, sloped ground that drains away from the casing, and records of every test and repair. New York families can start with the New York State Department of Health Private Wells page; Connecticut families can use the Connecticut DPH Private Well Water Program and testyourwell.ct.gov.
Test through a state-certified laboratory, and let your proximity screening choose the panel: pesticide lists from nearby golf courses’ application records, lead where the airport registry is close, and bacteria, nitrate and pH as the annual baseline. Re-test after installing treatment to confirm it does what it claims.

Treatment limits

No single device removes everything; each certification covers named substances only.
Cartridges and membranes need scheduled replacement; a lapsed filter can release what it trapped.
Treatment is a household answer, not a substitute for source reduction on shared land.

Local help

Who does these tests near us

Water and soil tests are run by state-certified laboratories, and several public and university laboratories in Westchester and Fairfield counties take samples directly from households. Two of them publish their prices. The contacts, fees and hours below were checked on October 22, 2026: call before you sample, because containers, hold times and prices change.

Westchester County, New York

Westchester County Laboratories and Research in Valhalla is the county’s own state-accredited laboratory and accepts homeowner well samples. Well Water Package A, $583.10, matches the county well law: coliform and E. coli bacteria, chloride, pH, nitrate, arsenic, iron, lead at first draw and flush, manganese, sodium and volatile organic chemicals, with health department reporting and a homeowner consultation included. Well Water Package B, $383.51, follows the state Department of Health’s recommended panel. Client services: 914-231-1620, 10 Dana Road, Valhalla, open weekdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Westchester County Department of Health private well water page explains Local Law 7 of 2007, which requires well testing when property is sold, when it is leased with routine testing at least every five years, and before water from a new well or a well idle for five years is used. The same page posts the list of state-certified laboratories registered with the county to file results under that law, including laboratories in Valhalla, Yorktown Heights, Orangeburg and across the line in Newtown and Woodbridge, Connecticut. Health department: 914-995-7268.
If you need a specific compound rather than a standard panel, the New York State accredited laboratory search lets you look up certified laboratories by name or by analyte and method, so you can confirm a laboratory is approved for the pesticide or metal you are asking about.
Westchester well owners may qualify for free PFAS testing: the New York State Private Well PFAS Testing and Mitigation Rebate Pilot Program is accepting testing applications in Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Suffolk and Ulster counties, and offers rebates toward PFAS treatment where results exceed the state’s guidance values. Funding is limited and the program pauses when it runs low.
Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County keeps a plain-language water and septic page with consumer guidance, flood advice for wells, and links to the New York certified testing laboratories listed by county.

Fairfield County, Connecticut

The City of Stamford health department laboratory is state certified to test drinking water and takes public samples: a potability test for total coliform and E. coli is $40, and a full single-sample test covering alkalinity, calcium hardness, zinc, conductivity, flushed lead, copper, sodium, calcium, potassium and magnesium is $80. Containers and instructions come from the laboratory on the eighth floor of the Stamford Government Center, drop-off Monday through Thursday 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., 203-977-4378.
Connecticut keeps its own approved-laboratory lists. The State Department of Public Health private well water program points to in-state laboratories certified to test drinking water and the full approved laboratory list, each showing the analyte groups a laboratory holds, including pesticides, herbicides and PCBs. Confirmation of any listing: 860-509-7389; private well program help: 860-509-8401.
The University of Connecticut Institute of Water Resources map shows state-certified laboratories for private well testing by location and marks which ones also test for arsenic and uranium beyond the usual potability parameters.
Elsewhere in Connecticut, the Regional Water Authority laboratory in Wallingford is state certified for drinking water and takes consumer samples for PFAS, lead and copper, inorganic chemistry and the state’s recommended private well panel.

Soil testing on both sides of the line

The Westchester County Soil and Water Conservation District explains why soil is tested for two separate questions, fertility and health versus contaminants, and warns that a healthy-looking plant says nothing about lead or arsenic in the ground it grows in.
The Cornell Soil Health Laboratory sells soil health packages and individual analyses to the public, and its heavy metal test (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc) runs through the New York State Community Gardens Soil Testing Program, which gives eligible food-producing gardens a comprehensive soil test at no charge while funding lasts.
In Connecticut, the UConn Soil Nutrient Analysis Laboratory in Storrs handles roughly 14,000 samples a year from homeowners, landscapers and turf managers, with a standard nutrient analysis with pH as the usual starting point and add-ons including organic matter, texture and environmental soil metals. Samples are dropped off or shipped with a submission form.

Ask before you pay

A standard well package does not include the pesticides a nearby course applies. Bring the product names from the application records you hold and ask the laboratory to quote those specific analyte groups in writing.
For lead in household plumbing, ask for both a first-draw sample and a flushed sample, which is what the county package does; a single glass from the kitchen tap can miss the problem.
Bacteria samples have hold times. Use the laboratory’s own bottles, keep samples cool and deliver them inside the window; the county laboratory asks for multiple samples by 3:30 p.m. and single samples by 3:45 p.m. on weekdays, with weekend drop-off by appointment.
A result describes your water or soil on the day it was sampled. It is not a verdict on a neighbor’s land, and a clean result does not rule out a compound that was never in the panel.

Approach one

Mycoremediation (mushrooms)

In 1999-2000, Paul Stamets partnered with Battelle Labs and the Washington State DOT on diesel-contaminated soil (10,000-20,000 ppm petroleum hydrocarbons). Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) mycelium broke down 95% of it in 16 weeks. The soil was deemed nontoxic enough for landscaping use.
Michigan State biochemists showed wood-decay and crust fungi degrade DDT, PCBs, and PAHs in the lab.
Fungi have been used on pesticide contamination in Oregon creeks.
How it works: white-rot fungi secrete lignin-degrading enzymes (laccase, peroxidases) that dismantle complex organic molecules.

Caveats

Fungi do NOT destroy heavy metals. Copper from copper-sulfate fungicides persists no matter what.
Never eat mushrooms grown on contaminated soil; bioaccumulation is not fully mapped.
The evidence is pilot and small-scale, not golf-course scale.

Approach two

Phytoremediation (plants)

UMass Amherst researcher John Clark, funded by the USGA, tested vegetative filter strips at golf course edges: certain pesticides in soil reduced up to 94% (greenhouse trials). His work also found 5-10% of applied pesticides are lost in runoff, up to 30% worst case.
Hybrid poplars (Burken and Schnoor): break down atrazine in soil, absorb it from groundwater, degrade it to less-toxic daughter products like hydroxyatrazine.
Willows: phytodegradation of organic pollutants. Vetiver grass hedges trapped 67-90% of pesticides in cotton-farm runoff (Truong et al. 2002). Indian grass: root-zone microbes detoxify pesticide residues.
The EPA playbook: trees (poplar, willow) for deep contamination and groundwater; grasses for shallow soil.

Timescale

Years, not weeks. This is restoration, not a quick fix.

Bottom line

Restoration research offers possibilities, with limits in scale, speed and completeness. Neighbors, grounds teams and qualified professionals can use that information to consider prevention and restoration together: taking care of shared land starts with informed decisions.