EPA begins Hudson River dredging review

If people eat fish caught from the Hudson River, do they have less chance of developing cancer than they did a decade ago?

That’s the central question as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency starts a five-year review of the $1 billion cleanup of cancer-causing PCBs from the Hudson River between Hudson Falls and Troy, which ended last fall.

While the dredging of polychlorinated biphynols discharged by General Electric plants in Hudson Falls and Fort Edward has been focused on the 40-mile stretch of river, the federal Superfund pollution site stretches all the way to New York City, a total of 200 miles.

As the diverse parties on the project’s Community Advisory Group came together Thursday at Saratoga Spa State Park to discuss the planning for the five-year review, it was clear that many observers consider the cleanup work incomplete.

“I’m here to tell you that downriver has been forgotten,” said Gil Hawkins of the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association. “There are people who are taking fish from the river, Spanish and Asian people who use it in their cuisine, people who are subsistence fishing.”

The advisories that people not consume fish from the river aren’t getting out to those people, Hawkins said, and he urged that meetings about the cleanup, which have mostly been held in Saratoga County, be scheduled in New York City and other downriver locations.

A report last winter by the Hudson’s Natural Resource Trustees found that PCB levels in fish aren’t dropping as quickly as had been hoped, though the EPA subsequently faulted some of their data.

The current EPA plan is to keep monitoring the river to see if it naturally recovers, though the findings of the five-year plan could conceivably change that.

“If fish data [on PCB levels] doesn’t go down for six or eight years, that would be a problem,” said Gary Klawinski, the EPA project manager.

But he said there’s is no timeframe for when it is expected that consuming fish would be safe. “We expect the fish to recover,” he said.

“Different species at different locations will have different rates of recovery,” said Kevin Farrar, an environmental remediation specialist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

David Mathis of Schuylerville, who represents recreational boating interests, said the dredging project has been devastating for the riverfront recreational economy, because people don’t believe the river is safe to use.

“There’s way fewer boats than there were years ago,” he said. “To bring this river back as a recreational area, we’ve got to do better. The boaters are basically concerned about, how safe is this?”

After GE spent what is believed to be well over $1 billion on the seven-year dredging project, Mathis said he’d like to see GE spending advertising money to promote how clean the river now is.

But other data that emerged Thursday raised questions about how effective the cleanup was. While the most-contaminated section of the river below Fort Edward was dredged “shore to shore” and 87 percent of PCBs removed, in the Schuylerville area only about 36 percent were removed — about half of the goal. Klawinski said that wasn’t because of ineffective work, but because PCBs were found unexpectedly outside the area that GE had a legal obligation to dredge.

Klawinski said the plan is to simply keep monitoring that area.

Hudson River environmental advocates were unanimous last fall in calling for more dredging, but the opportunity has diminished with GE now dismantling the sludge processing plant in Fort Edward.

Klawinski said the basic questions to be answered during the review will be whether the project met its goal of protecting human health and the environment, whether available scientific data are still valid, and whether there is new information that could affect the conclusions.

The study team will include EPA, the state DEC, the state Department of Health, technical experts and representatives of the river’s environmental and business interests. New fish and sediment sampling will be done this summer, and a draft report is expected early next year.

The five-year review is mandated by federal law for all Superfund sites.

Reach Gazette reporter Stephen Williams at 395-3086, [email protected] or @gazettesteve on Twitter.

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