Sprol

The Hudson River is beautiful. It begins in the Adirondack mountains, a little over 4200 feet from the base of New York State’s highest peak, Mt. Marcy, and flows for 315 miles; past the extraordinary rock formations known as the Palisades, to the southern tip of Manhattan, where it meets the Atlantic Ocean.

At the lower end of the Hudson, the freshwater from the mountain mixes with salt water from the Atlantic, forming an estuary. Past home to a variety of commercial fisheries, the Hudson River has been known to contain up to 200 different types of fish.

Yet despite its natural beauty, the Hudson River is a very dangerous place. Beneath the pristine surface is a PCB graveyard, where deposits of the known carcinogen have settled into the sludge that sits at the bottom of the river. For years environmentalists have been working to get it cleaned up. There is just one problem: the company responsible for the majority of the PCB deposits that pollute this national treasure is a very big company, with very close friends in Washington.

That company, General Electric Company (GE), has spent millions of dollars trying to convince Congress and the public that the proposed cleanup of the Hudson River will actually make the PCB problem worse.

Their main reason for resisting the original EPA-sponsored cleanup proposal, projected to cost in excess of $500 million, is a “moral” argument, not a financial one, says GE spokesperson, lawyer, and former CEO Jack Welch. He insists the cleanup is not necessary because PCB deposits have settled into the muck at the bottom of the river, which Welch says means that “the river is cleaning itself.” Scientists, environmentalists, and a variety of non-profit organizations (with no ties to GE ) say otherwise.

Despite the passage of the 1976 Toxic Substance Control Act, which banned PCB manufacturing and required any use of PCBs be done within “totally enclosed systems,” numerous tests for PCB concentration have continued to yield extremely high levels of the contaminant throughout the Hudson River. In 1992, Department of Environmental Conservation(DEC) fish sampling data revealed a 300% increase in PCB levels of fish in the Upper Hudson.

As far back as 1977, when the EPA’s Clean Water Act made it illegal to dump any PCBs into navigable waters, the Hudson was becoming known as a toxic river. Yet six years later, an EPA study of the “PCB problem” in the Hudson River resulted in a Record of Decision (ROD) calling for no action. This caused extreme concern in the environmental community as it came even as the FDA reduced the limit for ppm PCBs in fish fit for human consumption, from 5 to 2, in response to new data.

In 1989, DEC took the lead and asked the EPA to reconsider their 1984 ROD of “no action.” DEC followed their recommendation by releasing the Hudson River PCB Action Plan, which would have required 250,000 pounds of PCBs be dredged from the bottom of the Hudson River. It has been 20 years since that recommendation was made, but no dredging has ever been done.

The “self-cleaning” nature of the Hudson, according to Welch, makes it dangerous to dredge the river. All that muck will come up, he says. Welch believes that if we leave it alone, river water will just naturally keep getting cleaner and cleaner.

Reality, however, does not support this argument.

In 1993, more than 15 years after PCB dumping stopped, DEC found an “oily liquid” at the GE site at Allen Mills that contained 72% pure PCBs. They also found seven GE PCB-laden capacitors in the water near GE’s Hudson Falls plant. This prompted DEC to order GE to clean up the land around the river, but they have yet to require any cleanup of the river, itself.

Meanwhile, scientists discovered that evaporation of PCBs allows them to become airborne–meaning PCBs in the sediment of the river, which are exposed at low tide, can potentially be breathed in by residents or tourists. This prompted research into PCB levels in locals. The results were not good.

High PCB levels were found in the bodies of people who do not eat fish. Additional studies showed high levels of PCBs in tree swallows and a 16-week old bald eagle tested for PCBs was found to have 71 ppm PCBs in its body fat.

Since then, a Natural Resources Damages Claim has been made, and the EPA has begun work on a feasibility study to outline the scope of work involved in a Hudson River cleanup. In 2002, they came up with a comprehensive plan that included removing “enough PCB-laden muck to fill more than 800 Olympic swimming pools from the bottom of the river.”

The cost of the program was estimated at more than $500 million. But in October of 2005, EPA announced a Consent Decree, which would, if accepted, allow GE to limit their cleanup to the first two phases of the original 2002 dredging plan, which would only cover about 10% of the site.

Since then, two separate lawsuits have been filed to force the EPA to disclose documents pertaining to the discussions they have had with GE and the White House, regarding the proposed Hudson River cleanup. But so far, mum’s the word. For political reasons the EPA prefers to keep secret the information that explains their sudden reversal of policy regarding a comprehensive cleanup of the Hudson river.

GE is putting an enormous amount of time and money into avoiding responsibility for the cleanup, despite the fact that they used and dumped PCBs into the land and water long after they knew they were one of the most toxic substances known to science.