Source: Dow Jones News Service, August 22, 2016
Posted on: http://www.advisen.com
New York’s environmental regulator has notified federal officials that General Electric Co.’s seven-year, $1.6 billion dredging campaign to remove industrial pollutants from the Hudson River has been inadequate.
Commissioner Basil Seggos of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation in a letter released Monday urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to closely scrutinize the effectiveness of dredging in its five-year project review, due to be released by April 2017.
“While EPA’s work overseeing the General Electric remedial dredging project has improved the Hudson River, the work is not done,” Mr. Seggos wrote in a letter to the agency.
With the letter, New York takes the side of groups, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other environmental organizations, that have warned that the dredging project hasn’t lowered the levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in the Hudson enough to meet targets set out in the original 2002 cleanup plan.
In the letter, Mr. Seggos said state officials agreed to the 2002 plan on the condition that removal of PCB-contaminated sediment would lead to lower concentrations of the chemicals in fish. “That has not happened,” he wrote.
The EPA has disputed those findings. In March, the agency said the river “appears to be recovering within expectations” based on samplings of fish from the Hudson. The agency said evidence gathered so far fails to show “anything other than that the project is a success.”
An EPA spokeswoman said Monday that it will review and respond to Mr. Seggos’ letter. “EPA welcomes New York state’s continued involvement in the Hudson River PCB cleanup,” the spokeswoman said Monday by email.
GE built electrical capacitors — which contained fire-resistant cooling oil containing PCBs — at a pair of factories along the upper Hudson River. Over decades, the company dumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PCBs into the Hudson, until the late 1970s. The compounds were banned as a health hazard in 1979.
New York’s action could pose a new PCB-related headache for GE, which has been eager to move on from the cleanup obligations that have dogged the company through the tenures of two CEOs, including current Chief Executive Jeff Immelt.
On Monday, GE spokesman Mark Behan said the company continued to believe the dredging had achieved its goals and that the EPA’s coming five-year review would show that the removal of much of the PCB pollution, though not all, was cleaning up the river.
“There is no need to speculate about the results of the project. EPA has repeatedly promised a thorough and rigorous review of the results based on the most up-to-date environmental data,” Mr. Behan said in a statement.
Mr. Seggos’s letter emerged the same day that GE officially welcomed workers to its new temporary headquarters in Boston, where the company is relocating after a public search for a new home that followed its decision to leave Fairfield, Conn. New York offered a package of relocation incentives to GE but was ultimately unsuccessful in luring the company’s headquarters to the state.
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More dredging needed in PCB cleanup, Maloney says
Abbott Brant, Poughkeepsie Journal 10:32 a.m. EDT August 25, 2016
(Photo: Abbott Brant/Poughkeepsie Journal)
A group of mid-Hudson Valley leaders Wednesday called for continued dredging of the Hudson River, despite the Environmental Protection Agency's assessment that the river had been successfully cleared of PCBs.
Standing along the waterfront at Poughkeepsie's Upper Landing Park, U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-Cold Spring, called the EPA's review of General Electric Co.'s cleanup inadequate.
“Too many of the PCBs remain in the river. That means they remain in the fish,” Maloney said. “That means the people that depend on the river for food and for recreation and commerce are all hurt by the failure to finish the work.”
Maloney, Assemblyman Frank Skartados, D-Milton, City of Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison, Scenic Hudson President Ned Sullivan and other local organizations announced that they will unite, alongside the state Department of Environmental Conversation, in urging the EPA to continue dredging the river's contaminated sediment.
The announcement follows Gov. Andrew Cuomo and DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos challenging the EPA's assessment that the cleanup of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, was successful.
According to Maloney, recent PCB data “suggests very clearly” that the contaminant remains present in the river.
The EPA, Sullivan said, is not properly reviewing that data and taking the necessary steps of continuing the dredging for another two seasons.
Referencing a map of Hudson River, Sullivan pointed out areas where contamination is equal to, or exceeds, the level necessary to be named a Superfund cleanup site.
"All of this contamination adds up to at least 136 acres of Superfund-caliber contamination," Sullivan said, adding that when GE first began the Hudson River cleanup, it was the largest Superfund site in the country. The Hudson River remains the largest Superfund site in the nation, he said.
But, with two additional seasons of dredging, Sullivan said he believes that problem "can be eradicated."
The river is an "economic engine" for the City of Poughkeepsie," Rolison said. Some residents get food from the river, fishing for fish and crabs that they eventually take home to their families, he said. PCBs continuously being in the water would pose a health risk for those people.
Maloney said without dredging, PCBs will continue to impact communities who live, and depend, on the water.
"We have it within our power to achieve a generational achievement and clean the river once and for all," he said.