20 years into Superfund cleanup, advocates say Hudson River is still too toxic

Read the full article by Rosemary Misdary (Gothamist)

“A federal cleanup of the Hudson River is not meeting its targets for reducing toxic chemicals in the waterway, environmental advocates say.

The criticism from a coalition of environmental groups this week highlighted a growing conflict with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the decades of work to remove PCBs — known as polychlorinated biphenyls or forever chemicals — from 40 miles of the upper Hudson stretching from Hudson Falls to Troy. Two General Electric manufacturing plants dumped 1.3 million pounds of the chemicals into the Hudson over three decades, ending in 1977. The corporate giant covered the cost of removing contaminated riverbed between 2002 and 2015.

The EPA said on Wednesday that it needed another year of research to determine how effective the cleanup of the Hudson had been. But the coalition of environmental groups said newly released EPA data made clear that an unacceptable level of PCBs remained in the water.”…