EPA urged to continue Hudson River cleanup
State, Dutchess County, and local leaders gathered to urge the EPA to require a PCB cleanup of the Hudson River.
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. » State, Dutchess County, and local leaders gathered on the east shore of the Hudson River on Monday to urge the EPA to require a comprehensive PCB cleanup of the Hudson River.
Poughkeepsie Mayor Robert Rolison, a Republican, said the river has a lot to do with revitalization of the city and efforts need to continue to remediate the upriver PCB pollution caused by General Electric manufacturing. He said the Poughkeepsie waterfront has become a bustling area of both residential and commercial construction and leaders need to remain vigilant in protecting the river.
“We’ve got the people that live here; we have people that are establishing businesses, but we have a river that we need to make sure that we protect,” Rolison said. “We get our water from the river and so does the town of Poughkeepsie and other customers, so there are so many reasons why we need to never stop being vigilant in the protection of this great resource.”
From 2010 through 2015, General Electric removed 2.75 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment from a 40-mile stretch of the river north of Albany-Troy under an agreement with the EPA.
The EPA’s recently released review said that based on the data so far, the cleanup will protect human health and the environment in the long term. Critics pushing for a broader cleanup have noted that a large amount of sediment contaminated by PCBs remains in the river.
General Electric dumped more than 1 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls into the river
from two of the company’s upriver plants for decades until the federal government banned PCBs in 1977 as a suspected carcinogen.
Urging the EPA to use modern data to evaluate remediation, Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro, also a Republican, on Monday said “this is about jobs, but also our vitality, because PCBs in the Hudson pose a health threat to people living in riverfront communities. For 70 years, the economic, recreational, cultural, and scenic resources — public resources — of the Hudson River have been damaged by this pollution.”
Molinaro said the EPA “must do the right thing for the health and welfare of millions.” He said the agency must find that the cleanup that has already taken place is “not protective” and delete the unsupported claim that the cleanup “will be protective.”
Assemblyman Frank Skartados, D-Milton, pointed out that every community in his district relies on the Hudson River for water. He criticized General Electric, the source of the PCB contamination, by saying that “toxins were dumped into the river in the name of bringing good things to life.”
All of the attendees, including Beacon Mayor Randy Casale, an independent, and Rhinebeck Town Supervisor Elizabeth Spinzia, a Democrat, lent their support for additional PCB remediation.
“Furthering momentum with community revitalization in the Hudson Valley depends on a clean, healthy Hudson River,” Spinzia said.
“As long as unacceptable levels of PCBs pollute its water, sediment and fish, they hinder lasting economic gains.”
Scenic Hudson President Ned Sullivan noted a recent EPA draft review included language that the current remediation efforts would make the Hudson safe in approximately 53 years.
Sullivan said that recent studies by scientists using modern technology debunk that claim. He said the EPA received 1,500 responses to their review and, almost in unanimity, the respondents said that the current cleanup has not been successful.