U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand earlier this month stood with native leaders and environmental advocates at Albany City Hall to demand that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) take extra motion to scrub up polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) “forever chemicals” within the Hudson River.
PCBs are poisonous artifical chemical compounds that may linger in water and soil for many years. Exposure is related to a wide range of severe well being situations, together with most cancers.
From 1947 to 1977, General Electric dumped 1.2 million kilos of PCBs into the Hudson River north of Albany. In 1984, the EPA designated a virtually 200-mile stretch of the Hudson River as a Superfund website, and in 2006, the company mandated that GE clear a 40-mile part of the river from Fort Edward to Troy. This dredging of the Upper Hudson River, pursuant to the consent decree between EPA and GE, occurred from 2009 to 2015, however analyses of sampling information have discovered that vital quantities of PCBs stay within the river.
Officials at the moment are calling on the EPA to take extra motion to scrub up the river and defend the wellbeing of these within the space.
“Nearly a decade after efforts to get PCBs out of the Hudson ended, it’s clear that the cleanup hasn’t decreased PCB concentrations to target levels,” mentioned Senator Gillibrand. “PCB contamination is still unacceptably high, and it continues to pose a risk to everyone in the area. We have to do more to ensure that the Hudson is free of these dangerous, carcinogenic pollutants that harm humans, animals, and the environment.
“I’m calling on the EPA to acknowledge the insufficiency of the dredging remedy and to begin to investigate additional options to clean up the Hudson for good. I’m determined to get this done,” Senator Gillibrand mentioned.
The EPA is at the moment creating the draft of its third five-year assessment (FYR) report of the Hudson River PCBs Superfund website to find out whether or not the dredging treatment is reaching key PCB-reduction targets established within the 2002 Record of Decision.
Gillibrand is asking on the EPA to acknowledge on this upcoming third FYR report that the dredging treatment is just not working as meant and to start the method of assessing extra remedial actions.
