FISHERS LANDING, NEW YORK — Road salt normally helps keep the public safe. But in this small hamlet near the Canadian border, residents say it’s contaminating their wells and eating their appliances from the inside out. Worse, they believe the state misled them about the cause to avoid culpability.

Researchers from Virginia Tech, who helped uncover drinking water contamination in Flint, Michigan, think Fishers Landing’s problems were caused by runoff from a nearby salt storage shed run by the New York State Department of Transportation.

They also say the problem could be far more widespread than a single shed in a single town, with their analysis showing nearly half a million people across the state could face similar risks.

And while New York uses more road salt than any other state, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont use similar amounts of salt per mile of roadway, meaning residents there could be at risk, too.

Unlike public water systems, private wells aren’t regulated, said Kelsey Pieper, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Boston’s Northeastern University who studied the Fishers Landing area while at Virginia Tech beginning in late 2015.

"Worse, they believe the state misled them about the cause to avoid culpability." Our government would do such a thing?