State to fight for better PCB cleanup in Hudson
MOREAU, N. Y. » State officials threatened legal action Wednesday if the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t require more- thorough removal of PCBs from the Hudson River.
General Electric spent an estimated $ 2 billion on a six- year PCB dredging project that ended in 2015, and EPA officials said in June that while the work hasn’t protected the environment and public safety as quickly as expected, such results should occur naturally within 55 years. State officials, however, as well as prominent environmental groups and thousands of people filing public comments said that’s not acceptable.
“EPA in our view has failed New York,” said Basil Seggos, state Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner. “We’re keeping all of our options on the table, including legal action.”
GE dumped PCBs, a suspected carcinogen, into the river from plants in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward from the 1940s to 1977. Dredging, which covered 40 miles of the river from Fort Edward to Troy, removed about 310,000 pounds of PCBs and 2.75 million cubic yards of sediment.
A public comment period on a five- year EPA review of the work ends Friday. The DEC submitted its comments Wednesday, which Seggos summarized during a press conference at a Hudson River boat launch in Moreau.
Seggos called on DEC not to issue a certification of completion for GE’s work and to conduct a remedial investigation of the lower Hudson River from Troy to New York City. Many PCBs migrated downstream, he explained, and are found in fish within the lower Hudson.
The EPA says GE has fulfilled its court- ordered obligation to clean the river, but the DEC and other critics argue unacceptable levels of PCBs have been left behind.
“EPA, for some reason, has decided to protect GE rather than the Hudson River,” said Richard Webster, legal director for Riverkeeper. “The question right now is, is EPA listening? We want more cleanup. We want a healthy Hudson.”
However, GE spokesman Mark Behan defended remediation work and said the company plans to continue monitoring the situation.
“EPA has called the Hudson River dredging project an ‘ historic success’ that will protect human health and the environment,” he said. “Here’s why. After more than 80 percent of the PCBs in the river were removed, PCB levels in the water of the upper Hudson declined at every location where they are monitored and by as much as 73 percent in just the first 12 months after dredging. PCB levels in fish are declining as well, just as EPA projected.
“New York State approved and oversaw the dredging project and was instrumental in every major decision related to the project,” Behan said. “Its criticism flies in the face of the most up- to- date sci-
entific data from the river itself.”
EPA Hudson River Project Manager Gary Klawinski said at a July public meeting in Saratoga Springs that the agency needs more data to determine the cleanup’s success rate. But Seggos said when DEC asked the EPA last year to conduct sampling for remaining PCBs, the federal agency refused.
“We need to know what the levels of contamination are,” Seggos said. “The EPA has not gotten that done. If EPA won’t do it, the state will.”
Since June, the DEC has spent $ 2 million from the state’s Environmental Protection Fund to take 1,600 samples of river sediment. Results are not yet known, but will be made available as quickly as possible, Seggos said.
“The public has spoken loud and clear on this,” said Andy Bicking of Poughkeepsiebased Scenic Hudson Inc. “They want the river back, and they want it back in their own lifetime. We simply have too much at stake to let the river go in its current condition.”