By William Koebbeman
The second season of PCB dredging in the Hudson River was completed in November of 2011. 363,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment was removed from the river -- think 1100 railroad car loads. The total area that GE has to clean up has a footprint of approximately 440 acres and this year 75 acres were dredged. So, a reasonable estimate is that the project will take another four or five years at a cost in the billions of dollars.
In my opinion, EPA and GE are doing an excellent job of cleaning this mess up; but, the effort and cost of the dredging project continually makes me think of how easily this all could have been avoided.
For several years now, I have been the Sierra Club’s representative on the Community Advisory Group monitoring the PCB dredging project at the Hudson River Superfund site. This remediation project is the result of General Electric dumping over one million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River. While the dumping was going on, over 30 years, the state looked the other way and downplayed the risk.
Common sense should have told everyone that you don’t pour mass quantities of any oil in any river, but it was expedient. Now, it is costing billions of dollars to clean up a mess that would have cost thousands of dollars to prevent by properly disposing of the PCBs as part of the original manufacturing process. New York citizens, public officials and the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) should apply this lesson as the state decides whether to permit hydrofracking thousands of natural gas wells in the Marcellus shale. Procedures put forth in the DEC’s supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (sGEIS) should raise concerns:
First, the DEC has proposed to classify the produced wastewater as nonhazardous. However, the wastewater from the hydrofracking process may contain a wide variety of contaminants including poisonous metals like barium and strontium; highly corrosive salts; carcinogens like benzene and the radioactive element radium. In addressing the naturally occurring radioactive materials in the drill cuttings, the GEIS says “not likely to pose a problem” and lets it go at that.
The justification for classifying the wastewater as nonhazardous is superficial given the complexity of the issue and the many unknowns, such as the true composition and quantities of contaminants. In addition, DEC seems ready to rely on local water treatment facilities to treat this wastewater though these facilities were not designed for this kind of waste. DEC must define acceptable disposal sites and processes only after a thorough evaluation.
A second shortcoming of the GEIS is that it does not address the cumulative impacts of this industry. Even at low levels, the dangerous substances that are part of the hydrofracking process present a risk to the environment and human heath when considering the millions and millions of gallons of wastewater that will be produced over the life cycle of drilling. Where is the evidence that these toxic contaminates will not accumulate in the environment, wildlife and human beings just as the PCB’s have?
Tens of thousands of high-volume fracking wells are projected to be in operation over the 30-year span of drilling operations in the state. The DEC should include a full build-out model demonstrating the cumulative impacts on local communities, infrastructure, water resources, air quality, and farm production.
These are just two of the many concerns that have been raised regarding the fracking process. Again, considering the PCB cleanup effort, we must apply the precautionary principle by taking the time to thoroughly understand and mitigate the risks.
This is an industry in flux both in terms of the processes involved and the regulations being proposed. More information about drilling fluids and contaminates generated from ground rock is being made public as drillers are pressured to release data. A great deal of work is being done by the Congress, EPA and DOE. For New York, all of this work should be completed before turning the hydrofracking industry loose.
William Koebbeman is the Chapter’s representative on the state community advisory group for removing PCBs from the Hudson River.