From the 1940s to the 1970s, General Electric dumped more than a million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, into the Hudson River, turning a 200-mile stretch into a superfund site. The EPA required GE to dredge a section of the river as a result, and the agency has been monitoring PCB levels in regular reports ever since.
A draft of its latest report said the EPA didn’t have enough data to decide whether the cleanup was successful, or “protective” of the environment. Groups like Scenic Hudson, Clearwater, and Riverkeeper disagree: their studies say PCB levels are still higher than they should be.
“The data’s there. The levels are not dropping. The exposure to PCBs for the public is significant, and PCBs are cancer-causing," says Peter Lopez, executive director of policy, advocacy and science at Scenic Hudson. "We need to get them out of the river fast.”
Lopez used to be the former Region 2 administrator for the EPA, and signed off on its second five-year report. At the time, the agency said dredging hadn’t met its goals yet, but still could. Now, he says it’s time for the EPA and GE to go back to the drawing board.
“We’re asking them to say, ‘OK, we get it. The data —this is EPA’s data — is showing the PCB levels have flattened out," he explains. "They’re not dropping at all. They dropped after the dredging, but if you think of a curve, there's a quck drop and then there’s a flat line above where the levels should be.”
A spokesperson for the EPA says the agency is reviewing public comments on its draft report, and will present the final version in the coming months. General Electric did not return a request for comment in time for broadcast.
Swimmers don’t necessarily need to worry about PCBs in the Hudson, but anglers do. Aaron Mair, a past president of the Sierra Club, was one of them. Growing up in Peekskill in the 1960s, Mair says his family relied on fishing for food — all while having no idea that they were ingesting PCBs. Mair says many Black and Hispanic families still fish along the Hudson for cultural and economic reasons, and the government is putting them at risk and benefitting GE by not acting quicker.
"We are fighting a massive fight for a simple thing: protective action. Protective action means that [GE has] to rebuild those dewatering faciltiies. Protective action means that they’ve got to go back to the drawing board and start dredging. Full stop," says Mair. "Because the five-year delay, and five-year delay, and five-year delay — that’s 15 years that [GE] got the cost avoidance of cleaning up.”
Right now, it’s largely recommended to avoid eating fish from the Hudson, except in certain areas and in limited amounts. The EPA says Thursday’s meeting is meant to inform residents which types of fish are safe to eat, and to collect input on how they can better get the word out.
Organizers like Riverkeeper have been calling on the EPA to conduct an angler survey to better understand who is fishing in the Hudson and where. Attorney Drew Gamils says signs and public meetings are easy to miss, especially for people who don’t speak English.
“We gotta get our hands dirty. We gotta go out there on the river," she says. "And you can’t show up with a group of people in suits. If I’m going to go — and I’m an attorney — but if I’m gonna go, I should show up in some waders and fishing poles and you know, try to get people to talk to me.”
Lopez and Mair say the best way to protect fishing families is to get PCBs out of the river as soon as possible. Lopez says PCB concentrations will decline over time as they’re dispersed throughout the river — but that could take decades.
Even though the public comment period on the EPA’s draft is over, Lopez hopes Thursday’s meeting can continue a dialogue.
“If you declare the remedy is not protective, that’s not a failure," Lopez says. "Because the monitoring, the vigilence is part of what’s expected. So thank you for what you’ve done, and now you need to realize that if you need to go back to the drawing board, at least in part, that’s OK.”
The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Orange County Community College.
