Everything must go
General Electric needs to do more, some say
2017 saw the demise of many major retailers.
SCHUYLERVILLE, N.Y. — As General Electric seeks to close the books on a $1.7 billion cleanup of the upper Hudson River, a new fight is simmering over the company’s legacy of toxic pollution in the region.
This time, the focus is not on whether the fish are safe to eat, but whether children are safe playing in riverside parks and backyards that are prone to frequent flooding. Boston-based GE has agreed to spend $20 million testing soil in the river’s flood plain along the 40-mile-long stretch of river where it completed dredging 2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment in 2015.
But it hasn’t agreed to remove soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, which the Environmental Protection Agency classified as “probable human carcinogens.” That will require a legal agreement negotiated with the Environmental Protection Agency.
An actual cleanup project in flood plain areas is at least five years away, after soil testing now underway is completed, followed by a human health impact study and designing a cleanup plan.
In the waterfront village of Schuylerville, site of key events in the Revolutionary War, the protracted process of initiating a flood plain cleanup plan doesn’t sit well with residents and officials who have been trying for years to get state or federal agencies to remove contaminated sediment from an old section of the Champlain Canal that connects to the river.
“In our estimation, the EPA made a huge error when it didn’t include the canal in the Hudson River dredging because they said it was standing water,” said Schuylerville Mayor Dan Carpenter.
“It’s hydrologically connected to the river and was flowing when the PCBs were released” from GE plants upstream more than 40 years ago, he said.
Carpenter and residents want the EPA to order GE to clean up the canal now.
Julie Stokes, who represents the local chamber of commerce on EPA’s Community Advisory Group for the Hudson River Superfund cleanup project, said there’s a window of opportunity to do that in the next few weeks.
The EPA is completing its second five-year review of the Hudson River dredging and may soon act on GE’s request that the agency formally declare the project complete, which would diminish its ability to order the company to undertake additional cleanup actions.
The banks of the milelong ribbon of water in the heart of the village sometimes overflow during thunderstorms and flood adjacent properties, including nearby Fort Hardy Park.
Residents fear floodwaters will breach a dike and carry contaminated silt that has accumulated so deep that the canal is a cattail-filled swamp in some places.
“Should the dike fail, all that goop would flow right down into the park,” Roberts said.
GE invested $1.7 billion in the river dredging project, which EPA has said has met its goals.