Hudson River remains contaminated with PCBs: new report

The Hudson River remains contaminated with levels of PCBs that don’t meet state and federal regulations and the river cleanup remains incomplete, according to an updated report issued by The Hudson River Natural Resources Trustees. The Trustees is a group made up of representatives from agencies U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of the Interior and the state that are responsible for natural resource damage assessment.

From the 1940s to 1970s General Electric’s manufacturing facilities in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls dumped 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the river. High levels of PCBs in fish resulted in dredging the river to remove contaminated soil to reduce the future impact on species. 

“The update is important because we have collected more surface water samples that have been tested for PCBs, and all of those PCBs show injury, for now, four decades,” said Margaret Byrne, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Northeast Region’s assessment and restoration manager for the Hudson River. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a bureau in the Department of Interior, one of the agencies that make up the Trustees.

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Richard Webster, legal director for the environmental organization Riverkeeper, said the report shows, “there’s still pervasive PCB contamination throughout the river and we still have a long way to go until we can get a healthy Hudson. This reinforces that we need more cleanup through the Hudson.”

GE has asserted the dredging, which it conducted from 2009 to 2015, “removed the vast majority of PCBs in the Upper Hudson, as the agency (EPA) had directed, and PCBs levels in water declined sharply as expected,” said Mark Behan the GE spokesman for the Hudson River cleanup.

The 2018 report analyzed 10,153 samples of surface water from 200 miles of Hudson River flowing from Hudson Falls to The Battery in Lower Manhattan. The water samples come from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, GE and Richard Bopp a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The updated report is more extensive and analyzes an additional 4,026 samples, and looks at the years from 1975 to 2014, whereas the 2008 report ended with 2007 data.

Environmental groups and government agencies involved in the Hudson River cleanup consider it significant because it is the first update of the initial report released in 2008. The cleanup is one of the largest environmental cleanups in modern history.

The report was also released at a time when the EPA is expected to finalize the second 5-year review of the Hudson River cleanup and then respond to GE’s request for a certificate of completion.

The 2018 report found the following:

• Of the 8,667 samples that contained PCBs at detectable levels, all exceeded guidance criteria and regulatory standards. 
• Due to PCB contamination, aquatic life is threatened and the water quality is not at a level where fish can be consumed by humans and wildlife based on state and federal regulations and the Clean Water Act.
•  PCBs, a man-made chemical, would not be present in the river before GE dumped.
• Based on its most recent analysis on data collection and data collected under the Hudson River Baseline Monitoring Program, “existing injuries to the surface water of the Hudson River will continue into the future.”   
• The river is consistently used for drinking, culinary and food processing, recreation and most commonly fishing.

The group also is putting together a report that analyzes the contamination caused by natural habitat including animals and wildlife, which will include a dollar figure for GE.

The report does not make recommendations on whether additional dredging is necessary.

“As a biologist, I’m concerned about the significant PCB contamination left in the river and I look forward to meeting our goal of a successful recovery of the Hudson River,” Byrne said.  

The EPA has estimated that even with dredging it would take more than 70 years to get to agency’s goals for unrestricted fish consumption.

Amy Wu: 845-451-4529, awu@poughkeepsiejournal.com, Twitter: @Wu_PoJo