- In the 1980s, EPA designated a 200 mile stretch
of the Hudson River as the nation's largest
Superfund hazardous waste site.
Superfund is the nation's environmental law that deals
with the cleanup of toxic hazardous contamination
from historic pollution.
The Hudson River is one
of the largest Superfund sites in the country,
and one of the most important because of the thousands
and millions of people that are affected
by potential exposure to PCBs from fish in the Hudson River,
PCBs are a highly toxic chemical.
They've been identified by EPA as a probable cause
of cancer in humans,
and they've also been linked to illnesses such
as thyroid disease, immune disorders,
reproductive disorders, low IQ, and,
and other adverse health effects on humans.
General Electric dumped 1.3 million pounds
of PCBs into the Hudson River from 1947
through the 1970s when PCBs were banned by Congress.
- The fishing from, from Troy all the way up
to here in Fort Edward.
The health department has, has regulated saying
that you cannot keep the fish.
You can catch 'em and you can release 'em,
but you can't keep the fish,
nor can you eat any of the fish that you have due
to the PCB contamination.
Right now. One of the objectives of the dredging is
to get those fish levels down to the point
where you can start eating the fish again.
In fact, that really is the main source of risk exposure
that we, we have on the project,
and that's what the project was designed to do,
is reduce the levels in the fish.
- NRDC has been involved since the 1970s in working
towards this cleanup.
It's now underway.
We've used all the tools in our toolbox from litigation
to citizen advocacy to hard science.
- EPA oversees the general electric company
who is actually doing the, the dredging work in the river.
So our role is to be there, inspect the work, make sure
that it's going according to the plants and specifications,
and that they're actually meeting the, the standards,
engineering standards that were set for the project.
GEs role is to actually implement the,
the work itself to do the project.
They designed it. We reviewed and approved the design,
and they now have their contractors actually doing
the physical work in the field.
- The law in the US is polluter pays.
That means GE made a mess
and they're responsible to clean it up.
But for decades, GE spent tens of billions
of dollars on lawyers, lobbyists, scientists, pr people
to convince the public, seeking to convince the public
that a cleanup would only make things worse.
- Gee tried to make the argument that,
that you would get sufficient resus suspension to make it,
to negate some of the, the positive aspects of the work.
But what we're finding is that we, we don't see that level
of Resus suspension that becomes an issue.
The second phase of the project, which is what we're in now,
contains a lot of changes in the approach that we're taking,
and we find the Resus suspension numbers are much lower than
they were in the first phase, which was done in 2009.
- Initially, GE argued the PCBs weren't
harmful to people at all.
Then GE argued that the river was cleaning itself.
When the data clearly showed this wasn't true,
GE shifted ground
and argued that an attempt
to clean up the river would only make things worse
by spreading around the contamination,
by bringing independent science to bear.
And RDC was able to refute
and show the errors of those assertions.
NRDC was able to support in an informed way,
a strong comprehensive cleanup,
which ultimately the government has required in this
case and is now underway.
- Phase one of the project was the first year
of the project, and the purpose of that was to look at
the design itself, see how the equipment is operating,
are we getting the production that we needed?
Are we meeting the engineering standards
that was associated with the design?
And then after phase one, we had a peer review panel
that was put together to take a look at the data we
collected so
that we can make adjustments necessary for phase two.
And phase two is the remainder of the entire project.
We expect that to take anywhere from five
to seven years to complete.
As far as the dredging, what we do is we identify
where the hotspots are, that's
where the PCBs are the the most concentrated,
and the dredging contractor is, is told where to do
that and what depth.
He then removes that.
We go back and we re-sample it
and see if, if it is all gone.
If it isn't, we go back one more time
and they're only allowed to do that twice.
And from there we backfill it if it's clean
or we put a cap, which basically just covers it
and holds it in place so
that it's not coming back into the environment,
we will be dredging through the next five to seven seasons.
And of course, the dredge season is coincident with the time
that the Champlain canal is open since we need the Champlain
canal as part of the work.
So that means that our, our year
that we can actually dredge goes from roughly the 1st of May
till the end of October.
So we're working 24 hours a day, six days a week in order
to make up for time that we don't have access to the canal.
Thanks, Larry. How you doing?
- Boom. - That's unloading the barge
and it'll either put it in a,
a directly into a truck if it's dry enough
or put it through the, the size separation system.
The trauma system. What he's doing now is he's loading
up a hopper.
Underneath that hopper is a wobbler system,
and what that does is it processes the,
the material and anything four inches
or larger is kicked out, and that's taken away separately.
And the rest then goes up into the trauma.
The trauma is the blue and yellow piece of equipment.
You can see that rotating inside.
That's a, it's just a, a cylinder
that has five eighth inch diameter holes.
So anything smaller than five ace drops through it.
Anything larger than five ace goes
to the conveyor that's behind it.
And all of that material goes out on the conveyors
and is taken by, by truck up to the storage area
where it's then loaded onto rail carts.
The sludge is then pumped up to the, up
to the filter presses.
We have 12 filter presses
and that squeezes the water out of the, the slurry
water goes to the treatment facility
and the slurry gets staged for loading onto the rail.
Now, bucket he's using is a five yard bucket
with a level cut, so he can actually get right down
to the bottom of the barge and,
and do a good, good cleanup on the barge.
Once, once we're done with the dredging
the following season, we come back in, in the spring
and do habitat replanting.
What we do is we actually replant a portion of the area
that was dredged so that that becomes seed plants
to expand that weed bed again.
That, that we removed during the dredging.
The reason we put the plants back is
to reestablish the ecosystem
that was there before the dredging.
I mean, this is, this is the start of the food chain.
The, the plants provide cover for the fish to spawn.
They provide food stock for the fish
and other aquatic animals.
So it's, it's important to make sure that we get,
get the habitat reestablished
to give it a a boost, if you will.
It will come back on its own,
but this way it comes back much quicker.
- The start of phase two
of the cleanup in 2011 marks the beginning
of the end of a long saga.
It brings us closer
to the day when the Hudson River will be restored,
when fish will be safe to eat,
when communities along the river will be able
to enjoy its bounty, we'll be able to enjoy recreation,
commerce in safety
and health without fear of
poison and pollution.
From the legacy of PCBs, there's still a lot
of hard work left to get the job done.
So it's important to remember where we've been
and the challenges that still lie ahead.
Continued vigilance by EPA
and by the public will be crucial to ensure
that General Electric completes the job
and completes it right.