Posted on December 17, 2018
The Hudson River has been the dumping ground for over 1.3 million pounds of Polychlorinated Biphenyls. The PCBs were a waste product from General Electric’s manufacturing process for transformers that were not properly disposed of. These PCBs have been in our river since the late 1940s and their levels only increased until 1974. They were poured into the Hudson from a GE plant near Troy and have spread further south over the years.
After many years of discussion, debate, and court proceedings it was decided in May of 2009 that GE should start the dredging process in the area most contaminated, the Upper Hudson River. This dredging process was completed in the fall of 2015. During the first phase of the project, 283,000 cubic yards of PCB soil was removed. During the second phase, in the summer of 2011, about 2.5 million cubic yards was excavated. Both phases of dredging were conducted by GE with oversight from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Our focus on the Hudson now changes to a monitoring project, and the Lower Hudson Valley is finally being assessed for low-lying shoreline contamination in the floodplain.
A 2018 report issued by the EPA shows that each sample collected exceeded regulatory requirements and, because of this, problems due to the PCBs in Hudson River surface waters and sediment will persist. Bottom feeders and other small fish ingest these PCBs and they are biomagnified higher up in the food chain.
PCBs can be lethal for these fish and may cause other health concerns. By the time the PCBs have reached the level of human consumption, they have also reached an incredibly high concentration, and when consumed, they can stay in the body for years. PCBs can cause birth defects, cancer, rashes, impaired cognitive ability, weakened immune systems, liver damage, fatigue, headaches, thyroid issues, and unhealthy hormone levels.
Dredging of the rest of the affected areas of the Hudson River is a necessary step and one that must be taken quickly because it could take at least another 70 years to clean up the river, ridding it of harmful PCBs completely.
Source: poughkeepsie journal
