Lacking a negative determination of the effectiveness of General Electric’s Hudson River clean-up efforts so far, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on January 16 announced a finalized review that has been lambasted by an assortment of environmental groups finding fault with the incompleteness of the review.
Tracy Brown, president of Riverkeeper, alleged that “the EPA’s conclusions dismiss clear evidence that PCBs in fish and sediment remain at concentrations hazardous to humans and wildlife.”
Director of policy advocacy and science for Scenic Hudson Pete Lopez said that the conclusions of the five-year review “mean many low-income families will continue eating tainted fish, and millions of dollars of waterfront economic development remains on hold.”
David Toman, executive director of the sloop Clearwater, accused the EPA of ignoring its own data.
It was congressmember Pat Ryan who characterized the report most succinctly. “Total bullshit,” Ryan said. “And you can quote me.”
As its announcement highlighted, whether the cleanup so far has been “protective of people’s health and the environment” is a question that, for the time being, the EPA remains reluctant to answer.
The agency has shared plans with the public to release a protectiveness determination in an addendum to be tacked onto the review further down the line.
The EPA maintains that scientifically approved conclusions require a period of fish-data sampling lasting eight years. This data has been collected since 2016. The EPA says that sampling results will most likely be made available this year.
Administrator for the region which includes the Hudson Valley, Lisa F. Garcia, explains the delay by noting that “the science tells us that we can’t make a final determination yet about how well the cleanup is working.”
EPA director of the Hudson River remedial program Gary Klawinski concurs.
“When you do the statistics, it takes about eight years of data to be able to draw a reliable line through that data.” he said. “We can see that some fish are recovering better in some places than other places. We just don’t have enough years of data to, with confidence, say at what rate it’s going down. So we’re very close to having enough fish data to be able to say that.”
The agency was able to use the incomplete science at hand to conclude that the levels of PCBs found in the river water and in the fish specimens taken from that river, were exhibiting a downward trend ‘overall.”
“If I showed that chart to 100 people, 99 of them would probably say, yeah, it looks like it’s going down,” Klawinski said. “The problem is we can’t tell with confidence at what rate it’s going down. And so if it’s not going down fast enough, that might be a problem for us.”
The reason for concerns over PCBs in the river have been well documented. PCBs are considered a probable carcinogen, and the EPA has set the maximum contaminant level for that chemical compound in drinking water to under 0.0005 parts per million (ppm).
Limits below that level which PCB ingestion may be considered non-toxic may be beside the point. The levels of the chemical compound ingested in the body increase with each subsequent exposure, a process known as bioaccumulation.
Nearly 1.3 million pounds of PCBs, the result of industrial operations undertaken by GE were discharged directly into the river between 1947 and 1977, with the result that a 200-mile stretch of the river downstream to New York City has been designated a Superfund site since 1984, It is the largest Superfund site in the United States.
Between 2009 and 2016, GE was compelled by the EPA to undertake dredging operations intended to remediate the sediment which had settled on the river bottom. The company estimates it has removed 2.783 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment.
“We did the cleanup in the upper Hudson River, from Saratoga up to Fort Edward area,” says Klawinski. “And the reason why we did the dredging project was it accumulates in the fish that people can consume. We want to get the levels low enough in fish so that people can eat more fish out of this wonderful resource.”
The EPA’s goal is to see data showing that fish in the upper Hudson River contain less than .05 parts per million of PCBs. Expectations to arrive at that number are still decades away.
In the meantime, Klawinski said, certain populations like women of childbearing years and children shouldn’t be eating fish from anywhere in the Hudson.
In announcing the results of the review, administrator Garcia noted how many comments the agency had received during the 120-day public comment period which began in July 2024. She talked about people’s personal connection to the river reflected the passion that so many people had for it. “And this will drive our effort to continue to clean up and protect the Hudson River,” Garcia orated.
Fine sentiments. But as evidenced in every update of the process announced by the EPA so far, the clean-up efforts undertaken up to now have failed to satisfy the defenders of the river.
Congressmember Ryan shows every indication he will continue to be a dogged ally of the critics. He has teamed up with Republican colleagues like the outgoing Marc Molinaro to pressure the agency to demand more clean-up.
Even before the results were known, The two had suggested in a letter sent ahead of the agency’s announcement that the EPA should take its own advice by “following the science” and withholding a “protective” determination.
The pattern continues of caving to these big companies that should be held accountable and not holding them fully accountable,” said Ryan recently. “It’s just outrageous.”
Klawinski said the deliberate pace assumed by the EPA wasn’t related to the likelihood of legal action.
“I suppose we could always get sued,” he said. “We have been sued by New York State before, and GE could sue us. So forgetting about that, If we say it’s working or not working, either way, we will be challenged. And so we want to make sure that when we’re challenged we can be able to say, nope, we’re good, we’re following the science. We’re being cautious not to say anything until when we do say it we can say it with confidence.”
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