Feds to give GE clean bill
Over objections from state, liability will be lifted after PCB work
Federal officials are poised to absolve General Electric from potential legal liability for the controversial Hudson River PCB cleanup over objections from New York, state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos said Thursday.
Speaking with editors at the Times Union, Seggos said his office has been in contact with the Environmental Protection Agency over a potential finding that GE’S seven-year, $1.7 billion cleanup of the river satisfies a 2002 agreement between EPA and GE.
The agreement is called a “certificate of completion,” which could absolve GE of further liability for remaining PCBS in the river. But Seggos, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, local officials and numerous environmental groups believe that PCB levels remain too high and want the EPA to require GE to resume work.
Seggos said state findings indicate that PCB levels in fish,
a measure of the cleanup’s effectiveness, remain elevated, and are likely to remain so for decades to come.
“This should be a significant barrier to EPA issuing this finding to GE,” said Seggos. GE dredged Pcb-tainted sediments from about 40 miles of river bottom from Fort Edward to Troy after years of resisting the work as unnecessary.
That amounted to about 310,000 pounds, or 72 percent of what is now known to be in the river. That means about 120,000 pounds still remain along the bottom.
EPA has yet to issue a longawaited final report on the project’s effectiveness. EPA has been studying that for more than two years and issued a tentative report in June 2017 that projected Pcb-tainted river fish might not be safe to eat for five decades or even longer.
Advocates of a continued cleanup said the draft report shows the cleanup did not go far enough.
Seggos said EPA may issue its completion finding at the same time it issues its final report on the cleanup’s effectiveness. Federal officials have not decided on the completion ruling, according to EPA spokesman Elias Rodriguez.
“We hope to come to some conclusions in the near term,” he added. After initially intending to reach such a conclusion in January 2018, he said, the agency held back to “ensure that we had the most detailed and robust understanding of the performance of the upper Hudson cleanup following dredging.”
Regardless of the completion
finding, Rodriguez said, EPA will require GE to “continue monitoring and sampling the upper Hudson for decades to come with the understanding that if, at any time, it is shown that the remedy is not protective of human health or the environment, GE remains obligated to take additional action.”
The head of an environmental group that has been pushing for an expanded PCB cleanup of the river urged that EPA not find GE has complied with the goals of the original agreement.
“It appears that EPA may have made up its mind,” said Ned Sullivan, president of Poughkeepsie-based Scenic Hudson, “but I am hoping that influence of the Natural Resources Damages Trustees and the White House could lead to another outcome.”
The trustees include DEC, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In February 2018, those three agencies reported that PCB levels in the river as recently as 2014 remained well above federal safety guidelines, as well as above state standards meant to protect humans and animals that eat river fish.
Sullivan said a completion finding would preclude EPA from suing GE to compel it to resume a cleanup and “allow GE to walk away.”
Such an agreement would allow the agency to only consider information developed subsequent to the completion finding, he added.
“That’s crazy. What agency would willingly want to give up years of data and trends?” said Sullivan.
GE spokesman Mark Behan said he had no information on the potential settlement finding. The company has steadfastly maintained that it has met EPA requirements under the 2002 agreement to perform the project.