Source: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com, September 8, 2016
By: John Ferro
For years, just about everyone has had something to say about whether General Electric Co. should dredge additional PCB-contaminated sediment from the upper Hudson River.
Everyone except the State of New York, that is.
When Gov. Andrew Cuomo came to the area in June to highlight visitor centers planned for each end of Walkway Over the Hudson State Park, I asked him to detail the state’s position.
“Obviously, it’s EPA’s ultimate decision,” he told me, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency’s role as the lead agency in one of the most complex Superfund cleanups in history. “But the state can advocate. We are advocating for the most aggressive cleanup possible.”
That was it. Next question.
New York’s virtual silence on the issue was noteworthy because the state is one of three partners who are determining how much GE should pay for dumping an estimated 1.3 million pounds of the fire retardant and insulator in the Upper Hudson for decades before stopping in the 1970s.
The company has funded the $2 billion cleanup. But it is also liable for the damage it caused.
The two other damage-assessment partners, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, have been outspoken in their assessment that the river’s recovery will take much longer and that too much heavily contaminated sediment will be left behind.
But until recently, the state Department of Environmental Conservation had not taken a position.
That all changed on Aug. 22, when the DEC held a press conference to demand that more work be done.
In a letter to EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck, the DEC’s commissioner, Basil Seggos, detailed many of the points that have been made repeatedly in recent years by environmental organizations, NOAA and the Fish & Wildlife Service.
“The job,” Seggos said in a written statement, “is not done.”
News that the state had added its imprimatur to the call for more dredging was met with glee by environmental groups.
Scenic Hudson President Ned Sullivan, who as recently as May had bashed Cuomo (and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman) for being “missing in action” on the issue, described the DEC’s announcement as “a historic step.”
The DEC’s announcement came as the EPA is in the midst of a review of the cleanup’s effectiveness.
While the Aug. 22 press conference marked the DEC’s coming out party, the agency has been working behind the scenes to ensure GE meets its responsibilities under the 2006 Superfund agreement.
It was the DEC — not the EPA — that first raised questions about how GE was testing fish for PCB levels.
DEC biologists discovered the lab GE had hired was cutting too much fat from the fish before grinding them, lowering the PCB values. The issue first surfaced last year.
But DEC staff discovered the problem years ago. As far back as December 2013, DEC scientists were calling for regular, annual audits of GE’s sample collection, preparation, analytics and reporting, according to emails I’ve obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.
There were no news releases about these efforts. No press conferences.
Here’s hoping the DEC continues to be a vocal participant in the cleanup of the valley’s single-most precious natural resource.