Do the right thing, EPA

The Hudson River Superfund site is getting yet another review. Maybe this one will respond to continuing unsafe PCB levels

This year marks the third time the federal Environmental Protection Agency has conducted a review of the dredging of the Hudson River for polychlorinated biphenyls dumped there over decades by General Electric Co.

The message to the EPA is that the river is unwell and will remain so for generations unless the agency explicitly demands more action by GE.

“The PCB levels in fish are still too high,” said U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a Times Union editorial board meeting when she was in town to also meet with local officials and environmental leaders to push the EPA for more remediation. “People are fishing along the Hudson — some to supplement their food purchases. I’m very concerned they may not even know the dangers.”

Even as work continues on the third five-year dredging review, a group of federal and state agencies called the Natural Resource Trustees, a coalition that includes the EPA, has been studying the “past, current and future PCB injuries to (the river and environs) in order to identify and plan restoration actions to address these injuries.”

The EPA has hedged with its two previous dredging reviews, offering both accolades for GE’S work while adopting a wait-and-see approach to the river’s rebirth.

The trustees — also including the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of the Interior — have been working since 2002 on what’s called a Natural Resource

Damage Assessment. That damage occurred from 1947 to 1977 as GE dumped 1.2 million pounds of carcinogenic PCBS into the river from two capacitor manufacturing plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls.

We’re aware that this sort of data collection is neither quick nor easy, but it’s 2024: The population of those who consume Hudson River fish is only growing, and waterfront communities that could use the potential tourism boost of reconnecting with the river are struggling.

Further, river advocates can point to data showing PCB levels are rising in some places, and the river’s fish remain as dangerous to eat as they were before the dredging concluded in 2015.

GE, for its part, has maintained that the Epa-mandated dredging of the upper

Hudson worked, and the river is “healing.” But the company’s two most recent annual reports to stockholders has acknowledged further money may have to be spent on Hudson River remediation.

In 2022, the environmental group Scenic Hudson shared with the Trustees its estimated cost for the harm GE inflicted on the river: $11.4 billion. That figure includes damage to drinking water, recreational fishing, wildlife and more.

However much GE must ultimately pay to restore the river, the longer the EPA and the other Trustees wait to demand action, the more generations will be harmed. Time is of the essence. The watchdog coalition needs to seek further action by GE, and they need to start with this coming five-year review.