Leaders of an eastern Orange County village are considering removing fluoride from the community's drinking water.

Highland Falls officials are about to hold a public hearing on whether to stop adding fluoride to the village water system, which serves about 1,200 customers.

Scott Vaughan — whose family moved to the village three days ago — was disappointed to learn leaders of his new hometown are fostering a debate on water fluorination.

"I would have never guessed that we'd come to this stage, but here we are," he said. "There's lots of things that have changed."

Town officials said that during a recent tour of the water treatment plant on the edge of the village some residents noticed the fluoride appeared to be eating away at some of the equipment, starting a conversation about whether fluoride should be in the water system.

That then led to some discussion about fluoride's effects on the body.

Village Trustee Aleena Olivia is leading the conversation.

She has been sharing handouts stating the unpurified fluoride in the village's water system does not meet medical or food standards, and that "no other drug is administered to an entire population without consent."

While Olivia prefers the fluoride be removed, she wants residents to direct the board how to vote on the issue.

"It's not just [about] what one person wants or needs," she said Thursday in an interview at Village Hall. "It's [about] what the majority of our community is asking for."

Pediatric dentist Dr. Leyla Nakisbendi told News 12 that if the village board does end up voting to remove fluoride from the system, "dentists are going to be crazy busy."

She has been lobbying in Washington against water fluorination guideline changes that have been promoted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.

Nakisbendi said some local governments who have been deciding to remove fluoride from water systems may regret it later.

She pointed to Calgary, Canada as an example.

Calgary's city council removed fluoride from its system only to vote to put it back 12 years later after the rate of tooth infections increased.

Nakisbendi predicts similar outcomes in local municipalities where fluoride has been removed from water systems including Walden, Poughkeepsie and Yorktown.

She said she saw the outcomes first hand when her practice served two adjacent Connecticut communities, one with fluoride in its water system, and one without.

"On one side of a tunnel we had fluoride and on the other side of the tunnel we didn't have fluoride," she said, "and if you were on the other side of the tunnel, everyone had cavities. It was that clear."

The village board's hearing on whether to keep or remove the fluoride from its water system is on July 7.

Mayor James DiSalvo expects the public comment period to be left open for the rest of the summer before a village board vote possibly in September.