Almost every time anglers like Gil Hawkins fish the Hudson River, they throw their catch back in the water — because PCB contamination has placed severe restrictions on what can be eaten. There's so much pollution, commercial fishing is outright banned. Marinas along the landmark river have to pay high fees to dispose of contaminated mud when they conduct routine dredging.
And while the Hudson River is being celebrated this summer, on the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's historic voyage, it still holds the awful distinction of being the nation's largest Superfund site.
None of this is likely to change
Even though a long-awaited cleanup of PCBs began last month, it may not benefit North Jersey's portion of the polluted waterway for 30 years — if at all.
"You don't just drop 1.3 million pounds [of PCBs] in the river and think the river and its fish are going to rebound after one dredging action," said Hawkins, a Leonia resident and a member of the Hudson River Fisherman's Association. "The bottom line is, the water will become cleaner, but it's going to take some time."
In order for the lower Hudson and New York Harbor to reach safe standards by 2040, about 2 million cubic yards of PCB-laden sediment — enough to fill 100,000 large dump trucks — must be dredged from the Hudson. In addition, the heavily contaminated Passaic River also needs a cleanup — because its pollution washes into the Hudson and adds to the contamination there, according to an ongoing scientific study of contaminants in the harbor.
But there is uncertainty over whether those cleanups will ever get off the ground, let alone be complete
General Electric Co., which legally released 1.3 million pounds of the banned chemical into the Hudson for decades, has yet to commit to a full $750 million cleanup of the river. The first phase of dredging, which began May 15 in an area 200 miles north of New Jersey, is considered a test run and would remove only about 10 percent the contaminated mud.
Meanwhile, the only major remediation project scheduled for the Passaic River is the removal of cancer-causing dioxins from a small portion of the riverbed in Newark.
Federal officials overseeing the Hudson dredging concede that the project's impact on the lower portion of the river will be minimal, at least in the short term.
"It's hard to say its effect down here," said Ben Conetta, the Hudson River project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "On a larger scale it can only be beneficial to everybody. But it may not be as dramatic here as it is [in upstate New York] for a number of years."
PCBs have been demonstrated to cause cancer, as well as a variety of other adverse effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system, according to the EPA.
About 75 percent of the PCBs in New York Harbor come from the upper Hudson, where 500 pounds of the suspected carcinogen pours over the Troy Dam each year, spreading pollution all the way down the river, through New York Harbor and into Newark Bay. The rest comes from several sources, including the Passaic River, which is also a Superfund site and considered one of the most polluted waterways in America.
The Hudson PCBs originated from GE's capacitor plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, N.Y., where the chemical was used as a lubricant for machine parts until it was banned in the U.S. in 1977. A critical moment occurred in 1973, when a decaying dam was removed 40 miles north of Albany and large amounts of PCBs flowed downriver.
The EPA initially decided against dredging the Hudson, believing the PCBs were entombed in the riverbed. But the agency reversed course in the late 1990s when reports showed that PCBs were escaping from the mud and migrating downstream.
After years of legal wrangling with the EPA, GE agreed to dredge 200,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment — enough to fill the Empire State Building to the 15th floor — from the Hudson about 40 miles north of Albany. It is the first phase of the EPA's plan to dredge 2 million cubic yards.
Up to 12 excavators will scoop sediment along a 7-mile stretch through November.
The dredging will be deliberately slow to avoid stirring up PCBs in the river — one of the arguments GE made for years against dredging. Metal curtains will surround some dredge sites and work will halt when the current is too strong. Despite such precautions, EPA officials said a small amount of PCBs will become free in the river.
"There will be some increased numbers," Conetta said. "But over the long term, that number is going to go substantially down."
The contaminated sediment will be lifted onto barges and taken to a new dewatering facility in Fort Edward. Up to 2 million gallons a day can be filtered, tested and released back into the nearby Champlain Canal if it meets New York's safe water standards. The dry polluted sediment will be placed on rail cars next to the plant and taken to a disposal facility in Texas.
Once Phase 1 is complete, an independent panel will evaluate the project, looking at several areas, including the amount of PCBs that have been re-suspended in the river.
After that, there is uncertainty.
Under the EPA's plan, Phase 2 calls for 1.8 million cubic yards of sediment to be dredged from a 40-mile section of the river north of Albany. It is scheduled to start in 2011 and last five years, but GE can opt out of the project under an agreement with the EPA.
A GE spokesman said the company will wait until the report is issued on Phase 1. "When all of the information is known to the EPA and GE, then a decision will be made," said Mark Behan, a company spokesman.
Besides the $750 million combined cost of Phases 1 and 2 for GE, the company would have to pay an additional $78 million to the EPA if the company takes on Phase 2 to cover the EPA's past and future costs, according to government documents. The EPA can sue GE to perform Phase 2 or reimburse the government if the agency uses taxpayer funds to dredge the river.
Several environmental advocacy groups, who spent years fighting GE to clean up the river, are cautiously optimistic that GE will commit to Phase 2. They point to the amount of money the company has already spent — $629 million — on Hudson River projects since 1990, including dredging preparation, the construction of the water plant and the PCB cleanups at its Hudson Falls and Fort Edward plants.
But adding to the doubts is GE's ongoing court battle challenging the validity of the Superfund law itself. GE has argued that the EPA's ability to order Superfund cleanups in non-emergency situations violates the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.
In January, a federal judge upheld the Superfund law. GE appealed.
"That's why people have a right to be skeptical," said Alex Matthiessen, president of the Hudson Riverkeeper environmental group. "On one hand they made significant investments [to clean the Hudson]. On the other hand they are fighting the very constitutionality of the Superfund law."
Still, some environmentalists say that it's too late for GE to back out.
"If they reneged on cleaning the Hudson, they would be committing fiscal suicide," Hawkins said. "They can now advertise their efforts as a green company, as a community partner."
For the sediment in New York Harbor to be cleaned up by 2040, both phases of the Hudson must be completed, according to a finding of the Contamination Assessment and Reduction Project, a multi-agency project funded by the Port Authority.
But there is still a lot scientists don't know about PCBs in the lower Hudson, including where the hotspots are.
The CARP study found that the polluted 17-mile stretch of the Passaic River also needs to be cleaned in order for PCBs to stop migrating into New York Harbor.
Both the Hudson and Passaic are "tidally influenced," said Bob Nyman, director of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program. "PCBs can migrate around the harbor."
But even environmental officials say it would take a Herculean effort to fully clean the Passaic, which was heavily industrialized for more than a century. Pollution is so bad in the Passaic that all fish consumption is banned. In the Hudson, by contrast, restrictions for recreational fisherman range from one to 12 meals a year, depending on the species.
PCBs migrated into the Passaic from scores of factories that once used the chemical as a lubricant additive for machinery. Unlike the Hudson, where PCBs are the dominant pollutant, there is not as much data on PCBs in the Passaic. The EPA has focused much of its recent work on cleaning up cancer-causing dioxins from a stretch of the Passaic in Newark.
Lowering the amount of PCBs could be an economic boon for the region.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spends $55 to $90 to treat a cubic yard of contaminated sediment that it scoops out of New York Harbor and the lower Hudson to keep channels deep enough for cargo vessels and cruise ships. If the contamination level falls to a standard at which sediment can be dumped off Sandy Hook, the corps would pay $10 to $16 a cubic yard and dredging would take less time, officials said.
You clean up the Hudson and clean up the Passaic and it can end up costing us significantly less to do these projects," said Lisa Baron, a project manager for the corps' harbor program.
The Palisades Interstate Park also deals with the issue when it dredges about 1,000 cubic yards of sediment each year from its marinas in Englewood and Alpine.
Because federal law prohibits the discharge of contaminated sediments back into the river, the dredged mud has to be dried and disposed of off-site. PCBs "put additional restrictions on what we can do," said James Hall, the park's executive director.
Economics aside, there is a symbolic achievement at stake.
"Most people of a whole generation think of the Hudson as a polluted river," Hawkins said. "This is an opportunity for another generation to think of it as a clean river.
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