Posted on November 17, 2016
By Brian Nearing, TimesUnion.com
The state is pushing federal environmental officials to take nearly five times more PCB samples from the Hudson River than now planned in order to learn whether a $1 billion cleanup by General Electric Co. has worked.
On Tuesday, Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos urged Judith Enck, regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to drastically beef up her plans to study remaining PCB toxicity levels in the river in the aftermath of a six-year dredging project by General Electric Co.
Seggos said EPA plans to test 375 samples from 40 miles of river bottom between Troy and Fort Edward for PCBs were insufficient. He wants 1,800 samples taken and said if Enck does not upgrade the testing plan, the state will do the work and bill GE.
“If EPA fails to act, DEC is ready to step in,” Seggos wrote in a letter Tuesday to Enck. “EPA’s work is not done and its unwillingness to require GE to perform adequate sediment sampling undermines the five-year review process underway.”
He continued, “That is why New York is demanding that EPA undertake more comprehensive and scientific sampling no later than the spring of 2017. And until such sampling occurs, the EPA must not deem the remediation project complete.”
Seggos wrote a similar letter to Enck in August, outlining general concerns.
Dredging to remove PCB-contaminated sediment began in 2009 in Fort Edward and continued south to Troy, where it wrapped up in October 2015. The company had dumped the chemical in the river from its plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls.
Source: timesunion
