THE ISSUE:
The state comptroller pressures GE into studying the need for more dredging.
THE QUESTION:
How far and how deep does PCB pollution go?
It's a scenario that General Electric Co. surely doesn't want and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency isn't ready to order. Yet it just might be that the pollution of the upper Hudson River is more pervasive than either of these longtime antagonists acknowledge. So dredging for PCBs might have to be expanded. And New York would almost certainly be better off if it is.
That's not a new idea, actually. Other federal environmental officials have argued that an additional 136 acres of the river bottom, including part of the impaired navigation channel of the Champlain Canal, need to be cleansed of the carcinogenic chemicals that GE legally dumped there decades ago. Otherwise, they warn, adjacent sections of the river that have been cleaned up, thanks to four years of dredging, might well become polluted again.
In the meantime, science gives way to politics. Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service — which have raised the crucial issue but lack the authority to order further dredging — have a powerful, if tentative, ally.
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has prevailed in getting GE to at least study the possibility of expanding what's already a $1 billion dredging project that extends over 40 miles.
Good for him. Not that GE had much choice. Mr. DiNapoli can't order more dredging, but he wields enormous leverage as sole trustee of the $152.9 billion state pension fund — which includes more than $767 million in GE stock. And he was quite prepared to sponsor a formal shareholder resolution calling for the company to study the need for more dredging.
That's the kind of advocacy that the comptroller should engage in. If Mr. DiNapoli's predecessors had weighed in similarly during the years when GE resisted the clear need to clean the river, the project might be further along today, if not done.
New York's ability to push for more dredging, if it's proven to be necessary, doesn't stop there, fortunately. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman could file a lawsuit demanding as much. So could the state Canal Corp., which oversees the Champlain Canal.
That should be reassuring to New Yorkers, if for no other reason than the EPA's seeming unwillingness to be more assertive in enforcing the very dredging agreement it negotiated.
GE, meantime, strikes a pose that's just a bit too smug in taking note of the EPA's refusal to expand the dredging project to ensure its success. As GE has often reminded us, the EPA isn't always right.
A recent report by the Hudson River Natural Resource Trustees can't be ignored. It found that PCB contamination extends well south of the existing dredging area — below the Troy Dam and all the way to New York City. As evidence, the trustees — who include officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service — cite pollution of surface waters, sediments, floodplain soils, fish, birds ad other wildlife.
That's a stunning setback for once-promising hopes for a river where living organisms thrive anew and commercial and recreational benefits abound. That vision fueled the clean-up decision, and remains vital today.
Mr. DiNapoli and Mr. Schneiderman need to stand ever-vigilant. They just might emerge as the best advocates of all for a Hudson River free of PCBs.