Hudson dredge facility construction in full swing

Tag : PCB Jack
Hudson dredge facility construction in full swing July 2008
U.S. Water News Online
FORT EDWARD, N.Y. — Hudson River dredging looks ready to launch, finally.
Workers hired by General Electric Co. are finishing a canal-sidewharf for barges and a hangar-sized building to squeeze drypolluted river mud. A rail yard is being built with nearly sevenmiles of track for shipping out the waste.
After three decades of plans, lawsuits, negotiations, delays anddemonstrations, a rural site a few miles from the upper Hudson isbeing prepared to treat tons of PCB-contaminated river mudbeginning next spring - “Phase 1” of a six-yearoperation that will ultimately scrape away 490 acres of riverbottom.
“Nothing like this has ever been attempted before,” GEspokesman Mark Behan said over the rumble of construction at thesprawling treatment site being built near the river. “Theproject is unique in its scope and its size.”
GE plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls dumped wastewatercontaining more than a million pounds of PCBs into the river beforethey were banned in 1977. The gooey compounds once used as coolantsin electrical equipment are a suspected carcinogen and the narrowrun of the upper Hudson is considered so polluted the fish aredeemed unsafe to eat.
New York first took steps to clean up the mess in the mid '70s -one report then said GE might have to spend thousands of dollars.But local opposition, legal fights, studies and bureaucraticwrangling have had the effect of dragging the case on a raft rideon a long, lazy river.
A 200-mile stretch of river down to New York City was listed as aSuperfund site in 1984. GE spent years arguing that dredging wouldbe disruptive and scientifically unsound. Dredging was a particularsore point with former GE head Jack Welch, who snapped at apro-dredging nun at a 1998 shareholders' meeting “You owe itto God to be on the side of truth here.”
GE dropped public opposition after the Environmental ProtectionAgency signed a dredging order in 2002. Dredging could have startedin 2005, but legal issues and negotiations pushed back the startdate several times.
During the delays, officials picked a 110-acre dredge treatmentsite along the Champlain Canal, a couple of miles from where thecanal connects with the Hudson. Shovels hit the ground here inApril 2007 and the “dewatering” site is taking shape.Behan said the site employs 150 people, making it one of the largerconstruction projects in upstate New York. Before a single scoop istaken out of the river, the company has already spent $395 million.
Barring 11th-hour glitches, this site will run around the clocknext summer, six days a week. It will take sediment scooped up from“hot spots” along a six-mile stretch of river south ofFort Edward, where up to eight dredges will work simultaneously.After being barged to the dewatering site, the sludge will bepressed dry and shipped by train to a burial site in western Texas.The water will be treated.
Neither the EPA nor GE will provide a cost estimate to complete theproject.
The scope of the looming project - more than 200 workers will beinvolved - long ago raised fears among locals that their littleriver towns will be ruined by the incessant rumble of trucks anddredges. EPA spokeswoman Kristen Skopeck said they are trying hardto minimize trauma. Trucks will detour around Fort Edward, the“clamshell” dredges will leak as little as possible andthe operation will be quieter than a lawn mower to people on shore.
Not everyone here is assured. But five years after the EPA'sdredging decision, there is a sense among both advocates andopponents that it's going to happen. It's just a question of when.
“I'm hoping it will happen,” said James Nyemchek as heate wings at a Fort Edward pizza place. “I just don't thinkit will happen on time.”
The EPA and GE say they see no impediments for a 2009 start.
GE has a lawsuit challenging the federal Superfund law, but Behansaid it will not affect the Hudson cleanup.
A separate legal challenge is expected from downriver towns thatdraw drinking water from the Hudson, where there are worries aboutPCBs kicked up by the dredging.
The EPA is providing a pipeline that will deliver water to thetowns from Troy when PCB levels exceed the federal safety standardsof 500 parts per trillion. Skopeck said the EPA is following thelaw and protecting the public.
But Waterford supervisor Jack Lawler says the EPA will not alwaysbe able to test the water quickly enough. And he doesn't wantWaterford residents to drink water with any extra PCBs in it, evenif the EPA says it's safe.
“These are the people who said the air at Ground Zero is safeto breathe,” Lawler said. “I'm skeptical.”
Still, environmentalists are more concerned about what will happenonce dredging starts. The first phase of dredging from May throughOctober, when 400,000 tons of river bottom will be removed, isessentially a test for Phase 2, which will take five years andscrape up five times more material. After Phase 1, results will bepeer reviewed to measure the dredging's effectiveness.
Based on the peer review, GE could decide not to perform Phase 2.But both the company and federal regulators say the work isproceeding in good faith. On a tour of the dewatering site, Behansaid “we built this facility for both phases.”
And even if GE bows out, EPA could continue and recoup costs fromGE. Skopeck said the EPA would see the project through, thoughenvironmentalists remain wary.
“We're all going to be watching very carefully,” saidWarren Reiss, a lawyer with Scenic Hudson.
Behan said the first full year of Phase 2 dredging would be 2011,which would mean the river could be back to something like itsoriginal state in 2016. New sand will be laid where the riverbottom was scraped up and divers will plant water lilies and watercelery.
“You still won't be able to eat the fish ... ,” Skopecksaid, “but your grandchildren, hopefully, will be ableto.”