State eyeing legal action
Officials say EPA should require more PCB cleanup work in the Hudson River
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.”
EPA Hudson River Project Manager Gary Klawinski said at a July public meeting in Saratoga Springs that the agency needed more data to determine how successful the cleanup was, but Seggos said when DEC officials 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 Poughkeepsie-based 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.”
GE has defended its remediation work in the river, however, with spokesman Mark Behan also expressing the company’s desire to continue to monitor the situarion.
“GE agrees with EPA’s findings,” Behan said, “and is pleased with the results of the dredging project. We will continue to support the ongoing assessment of environmental conditions in the river and will work closely with EPA, New York state, local communities and others committed to the goal of a cleaner Hudson.”