Hudson River Superfund Site Is Not Meeting Targets

For centuries the Hudson River was one of New York’s richest gifts, driving commerce and serving as a natural resource, teaming with fresh fish and abundant in wildlife.  But today it’s among the largest superfund sites in the nation, inundated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that General Electric dumped in this expansive waterway for decades.

The oily liquids and solids, once widely used in multiple industrial applications, were banned in 1979, known to be highly toxic. But it was late for the 200-mile stretch of river, which still feels the effects after years of remediation attempts and several follow-up progress reports.

A plan of attack, which began in 2009, entailed dredging 2.7M cubic yards of PCB-impregnated sediment from a 40-mile section from Hudson Falls to the Federal Dam at Troy. At the time, EPA thought that concentrating on this Upper Hudson hot spot could reduce PCB loads enough to facilitate recovery of the lower Hudson too. The ultimate goal was to determine that aggressive dredging would prove to be a remedy that was “protective of human health and the environment.”

Today, the agency’s evaluation of that multi-year project, which culminated in 2015, is ongoing. Environmental advocates Riverkeeper and Scenic Hudson, lead players in a coalition called The Friends of a Clean Hudson, are pushing the agency to pick up the pace for meaningful recovery.  

“What jumps out for us is that in the cleanup plan adopted in 2002, EPA set an interim target to achieve .4 mg per kg concentrations of PCBs in fish filet by 2020 [that exposure would come from about one meal every two months]. A second interim target was to achieve .2 mg per kg concentrations in fish by 2036,” says Drew Gamils, Riverkeeper senior attorney.

“By EPA’s data through 2023, we are not even hitting that first target, while the ultimate goal is .05 mg per kg. So, we are very far away from the goals,” Gamils asserts.

Levels have dropped in fish overall but have flattened and are not meeting EPA’s targets. And concentration patterns in sediment are uneven, actually rising in some places, driving the agency’s decision to do more research.

Meanwhile, the PCB contamination has forced closure of commercial fishing operations, and New York’s Health Department has issued consumption advisories, especially warning that women under 50 and children under 15 should not eat fish from the river section south of Hudson Falls.

The trends gleaned through years of studies clearly show that the strategy is not working as expected. EPA needs to make a “nonprotective” determination now, and come up with a working remediation plan, charges Friends of a Clean Hudson, who did its own analysis leveraging EPA’s data.

“The road to recovery for the Hudson River is long,” says EPA Regional Administrator Lisa F. Garcia. “Over the next few years, we expect to have the data we need to identify reliable trends. If the fish data shows that recovery isn’t happening as quickly as we expected, we will take the necessary actions to improve it.”

The agency actually came close to taking a big leap during the second of what have now been three five-year reviews, when it considered issuing a “will be protective” determination. But after pushback it pivoted to a “deferred” determination, with plans to look at the data more critically.

Pete Lopez, executive director of Policy, Advocacy and Science at Scenic Hudson, was EPA region 2 administrator during that second review and largely responsible for the agency’s decision to look deeper rather than rubber stamp the job as mission accomplished.

“When I came in, I was briefed by Superfund staff who advised that they thought the work was proceeding as it should. They were guiding me to state that the remedy was meeting the goals and proven to be protective,” Lopez says.

The conversation became more complicated after advocacy groups showed Lopez state data revealing river hotspots that remained where dredging had occurred. He and the state brought all the stats together for a fuller view, leading to the agency’s reassessment—a pause that advocates considered a win back then. But that’s not their stance five years later. 

“We know, based on the sediment data, there are PCB levels that are not dropping. 

“If PCB sediment levels are still above those that were anticipated as part of the cleanup, and if fish PCB concentrations are still not meeting established targets, we have a problem. And we need to go back in the river, section by section, to assess where concentrations are and determine how to lower them,” Lopez says.

Other unresolved issues hang overhead, including a project that remains unclosed that involved capping land-based remnant deposit areas, which Gamils calls out as an area of concern due to potential risk of PCBs leaking from these sites back into the river.

EPA also continues a 14-year investigation of 80 miles of affected flood plains, yet to launch a cleanup plan.

As these long-standing issues persist, EPA is expanding its focus to other possibly troubled river sections, most recently entering an agreement with General Electric to sample 160 miles of the lower river.

Aaron Mair, an environmental justice advocate, was instrumental in bringing minority voices into the PCB contamination conversation. A retired epidemiologist from New York State’s Department of Health, he became keenly aware decades ago of these river pollutants’ threats to people of color. Their neighborhoods are concentrated on the Hudson River side of Albany, and they have fished there for years.

Mair started calling on them to share their thoughts, beginning at a hearing where both he and EPA’s then secretary testified. 

At the time conversations centered around technicalities like legally permitted maximum loads, he recalls.

“And I said it’s about the people. They depend on fish as part of their diet. Now, for the first time the argument of human risk from contamination was elevated in an open forum,” he says. 

Some fruits of this early advocacy are the birth of a community advisory group launched by EPA to empower citizen involvement, and technical assistance grants to underwrite this group’s engagement activities.

Alongside these transpirations, Muir, a founding member of Friends of a Clean Hudson, along with his colleagues there spent years teaching residents about exposure.

They continue to call on the most impacted residents to speak up. Now, with EPA’s third five-year review complete, they are asking for front-line communities’ public comments, hoping their collective input can sway the agency to render a nonprotective determination.

Lopez believes the federal agency was vigilant when it rethought the protective determination it was considering years back. 

“But my call to my former colleagues is that, as part of this vigilance, making the determination by now that the dredging is not working would be a badge of honor. For EPA to step back and say the remedy is not protective means it is doing its job,” Lopez says.

“Protect the people; protect the environment; follow the science. It’s ok if the initial work is not meeting the goals. EPA can pause, reassess, and attack it again.”