Hudson River cleanup focuses on shore after dredging comes to end

Associated Press

SCHUYLERVILLE, N.Y.

As General Electric seeks to close the books on a $1.7 billion cleanup of the upper Hudson River, a new fight is simmering over the company’s legacy of toxic pollution in the region.

This time, the focus is not on whether the fish are safe to eat, but whether children are safe playing in riverside parks and backyards are prone to frequent flooding. Boston-based GE has agreed to spend $20 million testing soil in the river’s flood plain along the 40-mile-long stretch of river where it completed dredging 2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment in 2015.

But it hasn’t agreed to remove soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, which are suspected of causing cancer and other health problems. That will require a legal agreement negotiated with the Environmental Protection Agency.

An actual cleanup project in flood plain areas is at least five years away, after soil testing is completed, followed by a human health impact study and designing a cleanup plan.

In the waterfront village of Schuylerville, the protracted process of initiating a flood plain cleanup plan doesn’t sit well with residents and officials who have tried for years to get state or federal agencies to remove contaminated sediment from an old section of the Champlain Canal that connects to the river.

“In our estimation, the EPA made a huge error when it didn’t include the canal in the Hudson River dredging because they said it was standing water,” said Mayor Dan Carpenter. “It’s hydrologically connected to the river and was flowing when the PCBs were released” from GE plants upstream more than 40 years ago.”