Posted on December 18, 2017
By Matthew Hamilton, timesunion
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that he and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will file a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force continued PCB-dredging of the Hudson River if the agency determines there is no additional cleanup necessary.
The state has been pushing General Electric Co. to do more after it completed dredging in a 40-mile stretch of the river between Fort Edward and Troy in 2015. The company has steadfastly claimed that it has met the terms of its 2002 agreement with the EPA to clean up PCBs in the river.
State officials believe otherwise, and the Department of Environmental Conservation this summer spent $2 million to conduct its own testing of PCB levels in the river.
“The Hudson River is a critical economic engine and environmental treasure and New York will not allow PCB contamination to continue wreaking havoc on this vital resource,” Cuomo said in a statement. “The data is clear: the job is not done and the EPA cannot declare that this remediation is complete. If they do, New York will take any action necessary to hold them accountable for ensuring our waterways are protected and properly restored.”
Cuomo’s announcement was billed as the second proposal of his 2018 State of the State agenda.
Claiming that the seven-year project cost about $1.7 billion, GE filed a request for a certificate of completion from the EPA last December, and the agency has until Dec. 23 to respond.
The lead lawyer for the environment group Riverkeeper applauded the governor’s stance. GE “did a clean up project in the upper 50 miles of the river that was too little and too late, but it continues to do nothing in the lower 150 miles,” said Riverkeeper Legal Director Richard Webster. “It also enlisted EPA to help in its effort to escape before the job is done, leaving river residents holding the toxic fish.”
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan also supported Cuomo’s demand.
GE spokesman Mark Behan called the dredging project “a demonstrable success in the first year since dredging was completed.”
“All of the PCBs EPA targeted for removal have been removed, and PCB levels have declined at every station where environmental data was collected, as EPA predicted they would,” he said in a statement. “New York state had 16 years to object to this project and did not do so. It in fact endorsed the project when significantly less PCBs were going to be taken out of the river than were ultimately removed.”
EPA did not offer a response to the governor’s statement.
In addition to a lawsuit, Cuomo is pledging that DEC will withdraw its concurrence with the EPA’s 2002 Record of Decision with GE, which guided the cleanup. The Cuomo administration claims that EPA relied on flawed modeling for effectiveness of the PCB remediation effort.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in November, DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos warned of a possible lawsuit and wrote that the state sampling of the river showed it is up to three times more contaminated than the EPA originally estimated.
“In light of the overwhelming evidence and data that the remedy is not protective of human health and environment, EPA legally cannot certify the PCB remedy for the Upper Hudson River as complete,” Seggos wrote.
GE has contended that not only has the dredging served its intended purpose, but that the state was key in decisions related to the project and it oversaw the dredging work.
“There is no dispute that GE met all of its commitments to EPA and New York State,” Behan said.
Source: timesunion
