DEC should be the Hudson River champion

Breaking its indefensible silence on what should occur next with the sweeping Hudson River cleanup project, the state Department of Environmental Conservation is asserting itself — and in a potentially big way.

First, DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos says that while dredging contaminated sediment out of the river has been a sure sign of progress, he added, “I think it’s absolutely clear the job is not yet done.”

Next, he demonstrated how the DEC is not merely talking here. He said the state has requested permission from the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the Champlain Canal, which also has been polluted as a result of old industry practices by General Electric.

It took decades of court fights and negotiations before General Electric agreed to dredge parts of the river.

And, over the course of six years, this one-of-a-kind, $2 billion project made substantial progress, with tainted sediments being scooped from the river, then taken to a plant for processing and finally sent via rail to an out-of-state landfill.

But here’s the problem: About 136 acres of river bottom containing about 35 percent of the polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, have not been dredged, and the contamination remains at unsafe levels.

While the Environmental Protection Agency fought long and hard to get General Electric to do the dredging project, the agency has been rightly criticized for claiming victory too fast. In fact, two other federal agencies — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — published a peer-reviewed study suggesting unsafe levels of PCBs will remain in fish in the lower Hudson for much longer than the EPA predicts. Those two agencies and the state DEC are essentially the guardians of the Hudson River’s natural resources, and they still have to make an assessment of the harm done to the river.

Up until now, though, the DEC has been silent. And, ominously, that silence came during a period when Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration was trying to sway General Electric to relocate its corporate headquarters from Connecticut to New York, an effort that ended in failure.

The EPA still has the responsibility to reexamine the effectiveness of the cleanup and could deem that General Electric must undertake more dredging.

The fight to get more contamination out of the river is far from over; the state DEC’s self-proclaimed mission is “to protect and enhance the environment.” It should be leading the charge for a cleaner Hudson.

On the web

For more on the Hudson River cleanup, see this editorial online at http://pojonews.co/2bRcJQc