Posted on June 8, 2020
ALBANY — Nearly five years after the removal of contaminated sediments in the Hudson River, environmental advocates remain concerned that levels of toxic chemicals detected in fish are not dropping quickly enough.
Data from fish collected in 2019 show that the levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, did not show statistically significant improvement over 2018. That’s a key finding, as environmental groups say it bolsters their case that dredging, which General Electric finished in 2015, will not be enough for fish to recover at the pace targeted in the cleanup plan.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency presented the new data during a Zoom community advisory group meeting last week.
“The probability of hitting [a planned] five-year target gets less likely,” said Riverkeeper’s Richard Webster during the meeting, referring to one of the time frames outlined in the dredging agreement. “You can’t wait eight years to see if we hit our five-year targets.”
The EPA maintains that more data is needed before a conclusion can be made.
“We need at least eight years of data post-dredging to be confident in a statistical trend,” EPA’s Gary Klawinski said during the discussion. “We just don’t have enough data yet.”
The state’s lawsuit challenging EPA’s position on the Hudson River cleanup is pending in federal court. That lawsuit focuses on the agency’s decision to issue a “certificate of completion” to General Electric after dredging to remove a portion of PCBs in the sediment concluded. The certificate was issued in April 2019, and the lawsuit was filed in August last year.
The state’s lawsuit is one development in the effort to remove approximately 1.3 million pounds of PCBs dumped by GE’s capacitor plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls into the Hudson River between the 1940s and 1970s.
A hearing on EPA and GE’s motion to dismiss the state’s case and related motions is scheduled for June 15 in Utica.
The sprawling 200-mile Hudson River Superfund site is the largest in the country and the dredging and restoration agreed to by General Electric in 2006 only addressed one piece of the multi-layered, complex legal and public health challenge it presents.
‘Tale of two rivers’
EPA’s 2019 fish data also highlight that the recovery of fish in the lower Hudson River continues to lag compared to the incremental improvements seen post-dredging in the upper Hudson River samples.
Members of the community advisory group from south of Troy expressed intense frustration with the lack of cleanup in the lower Hudson.
“We’re kicking the same can down the road,” said Gil Hawkins with Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, who said he doesn’t see much point in participating after more than 17 years with the group. “It’s a tale of two rivers. The lower Hudson is forgotten. In remediation, in habitat recovery, in the impact on communities and the ability to recreate on the river … It’s just the way this has come about and it is a shame.”
Aaron Mair, a former president of the Sierra Club, said there should be more assistance for downriver environmental justice communities that fought for a cleanup but have not yet seen a benefit.
There’s an ongoing investigation of contamination on the floodplains in the upper Hudson, with spots where high levels of PCB are found are capped to protect public health. Habitat restoration where dredging activity occurred is also underway. Those activities are not occurring at the same level in the lower river.
GE spokesman Mark Behan said the company is providing support for EPA’s lower Hudson review by gathering fish and water data.
Advocates are worried that the EPA is moving too slowly on initiating a formal process to address GE’s PCBs that flowed downriver into the lower Hudson south of Troy.
EPA officials have said they’re planning supplemental studies in that area for nearly three years — and there’s no clear timeline on when a decision will be made on launching a remedial investigation, which advocates are pushing for.
“What’s the schedule to get these studies finished?” asked Richard Webster with Riverkeeper during a Zoom-based public meeting on the Hudson River cleanup last week. “We’re impatient.”
EPA’s Gary Klawinski, who oversees the Hudson River site, said he cannot yet speak to the schedule.
He’s been organizing data from various sources into a comprehensive format; gathering dredging data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is hiring a consultant specifically to work on the Hudson River cleanup issue; and developing an internal scope of work. The agency is also having internal discussions because polluters besides GE are responsible for other historic contamination in the lower Hudson.
“We have to look at it in a bigger picture way,” Klawinski told members of the community advisory group during the meeting.
The majority of the PCBs that GE dumped remained in the upper Hudson River, which drove the focus north of Troy, said Judith Enck, the former EPA Region 2 administrator during the Obama administration.
“Historically EPA’s work stopped at the Troy dam,” she said. “What made the upper Hudson more manageable is we were only dealing with one big polluter.”
Advocates argue that there’s enough information now for EPA to move forward with a formal legal process.
“EPA is dragging their feet. They know they have the authority to order a remedial investigation,” said Scenic Hudson’s Althea Mullarkey in an interview. “They’re just choosing not to.”
Damaged natural resources
The Superfund cleanup of the Hudson River led by the EPA is not the only legal responsibility faced by General Electric from the historic PCB contamination. Federal law also provides for a “natural resource damage assessment” by trustees to identify and quantify injuries to the public and ultimately require restoration.
The trustees for the 200-mile contaminated stretch of the Hudson are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service and the DEC.
“The Trustees are working diligently to complete the three assessment phases of the NRDA: injury determination; injury quantification; and damage determination,” DEC spokeswoman Erica Ringewald said in a statement. “Most of the natural resource injuries have been determined and the Trustees are focused on the injury quantifications and damage determinations.”
The process is fairly opaque, although some reports have been released consistently by the trustees. It’s not clear when a full report and quantification of damages might be completed and the bill sent to GE.
The process began in 1998.
Scenic Hudson, frustrated by the pace, hired its own consultant late last year, with a report targeted for 2021.
“We are not waiting for the Trustees to move on this topic,” Mullarkey said. “With great respect to the process and their true devotion to restoring damaged natural assets, for the Hudson River NRDA, glaciers are speedier.”
The most recent public update from the trustees was a 2019 document highlighting lab-based research of the impact of PCBs at various concentration on embryos or a model bird species.
“The Trustees are assessing how birds breeding along the Hudson River may be injured from their past, present, and future exposure to PCBs,” a fact sheet states.
The trustees have determined there have been injuries to the use of fish based on consumption advisories and other information (2001), waterfowl (2013), the groundwater in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward (2015) and the surface water in the river itself (2018).
The trustees are still collecting evidence of injuries to mink (2018), catbirds (2018) and other birds. A 2006 report by the trustees also found that navigation of the Champlain Canal was damaged because of increased dredging costs to remove contaminated sediment.
Assessments of injuries caused by GE’s dredging, including to wetland vegetation, aquatic vegetation and freshwater mussels (2015) are also ongoing, according to a federal official involved in the process.
The federal official said “significant” progress is being made on the injury assessment and quantification process but declined to provide any timeline. The next step after injuries are identified and quantified is for the trustees to release a public Restoration and Compensation Determination Plan that lays out how the public’s loss of use and other injuries to natural resources will be addressed.
Examples of projects to restore the lost use by recreational anglers could include new access points such as boat ramps, potential dam removals to help restore migratory fish populations and other projects. The federal trustees are not considering injuries based on commercial fishery closure, which are considered private losses and not covered by this process.
“I think the agencies are painfully slow,” said Enck, who said she was impatient with the NRD process. “They also expect, realistically, that GE is going to challenge it but there’s no reason this could not be done sooner.”
The federal official declined to comment on GE’s engagement with the trustees. In 2014, the federal trustees sent a letter criticizing GE for not proactively engaging in the assessment process. GE has continued to refuse to engage, according to DEC.
Behan said the company continues to cooperate with the trustees by “sharing data and other information.”
Source: politico
