Dredging Up Ill Will on the Hudson

Standing at the water’s edge, Richard Fuller gestures toward the gentle sweep of the Hudson River as it glides past this upstate New York hamlet. And he shudders.

For Fuller is afraid of this river--and the graveyard of man-made toxins that lies beneath.

“What scares me are the things . . . you can’t see but which can still make you very ill,” he says. “It may look beautiful on the surface, but this is a sick, sick river.”

The local environmentalist reflects one side of a controversy that has muddied the social waters of riverside communities throughout this forested region, halfway between New York City and Montreal. At issue is how to clean up 30 years of chemical dumping by two General Electric Co. plants located here and in nearby Fort Edward--poisons that remain embedded in the silt along the river floor.

From the 1940s until the late ‘70s, General Electric discharged 1.1 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls directly into the Hudson. It’s a legacy that activists say has seriously damaged not only the health of this scenic river but also many of the people who live along its shores.

Others contend the Hudson is healthier than ever. They say environmentalists should let sleeping PCBs lie, or risk opening a Pandora’s box of chemicals that could further damage the environment and chase away tourists--dooming an already shaky local economy.

But the river is about to become one of the nation’s biggest and most expensive Superfund cleanup projects. In the coming weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to finalize plans for a massive dredging project that will be 10 times greater in size than any cleanup ever undertaken.

When authorities turn their attentions from the cleanup in New York City, the long-term Hudson project will await them, officials say.

The effort, scheduled to start in 2004, will remove 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-laden sediment from a 40-mile stretch of the river north of Albany. Out-of-state landfills then would store the oil-like chemicals that once were used as insulation in electrical equipment.

Federal law requires GE to foot the $460-million bill for the five-year project, prompting the company to wage a multimillion-dollar media blitz that has stirred up bad feelings and divided not only residents but also politicians as far away as New York City and Washington, D.C.

In TV infomercials and full-page newspaper ads, GE has claimed that PCBs in the Hudson are down 90% and that the federal plan is foolhardy.

“We don’t believe that digging up the bottom of this river and killing everything that lives there is the right way to continue the natural recovery that’s going on very well without the help of these government scientists,” GE spokesman Mark Behan said.

While arguing about everything from dredging techniques to their long-term effects, both sides admit that a precious river runs through this controversy, leaving former friends stranded on opposite shores.

In towns such as Fort Edward, Schuylerville and Stillwater, frontyard placards produced by GE proclaim “Stop the dredging” while others--often located right next door--support the project.

Residents only do business at stores supporting their point of view, and children are harassed by classmates about the opinions of their parents.

When New York’s Republican governor, George Pataki, came out in support of the project--introduced by former President Clinton and endorsed by Bush administration EPA chief Christie Whitman--an anti-dredging group immediately labeled him “a yellow-bellied wimp and a coward.”

“People have made enemies over this,” resident Pam Brooks said as she sat in a pro-dredging cafe. “They’ve argued and ranted and raved and fought and screamed. Now we’re all exhausted. We’re just tired of talking about it.”

Led by the environmental group Friends of a Clean Hudson, dredging supporters say the project is crucial to the future health of a river that is key to the region’s identity.

Designated by the federal government as an American Heritage river, the Hudson--which runs more than 200 miles from the Adirondack Mountains to New York Harbor--provides tourists a route to 80% of the state’s Revolutionary War sites.

It’s also a thoroughfare for thousands of pleasure boaters, who wind their way along the region’s network of rivers, canals and tributaries, pumping millions into the local economy.

“For locals who grew up around this river, it’s become central to who we are,” says Terry Seally, a former Fort Edward supervisor who favors dredging. “For us, it has all the majesty of the Grand Canyon.”

Ned Sullivan, president of the environmental group Scenic Hudson, calls the river the region’s most significant asset. “In previous decades it was a dumping ground. Now it’s fueling the economic revitalization of the entire area.”

Charlie Caruso has another reason for wanting to clean up the Hudson: He’s convinced its toxins are killing his relatives.

The 69-year-old says his wife, a former GE employee, died of a nerve disease. His father and brother both died of cancer in their 50s after careers at a nearby paper mill. He lost a daughter to lung cancer at age 34. And his uncle and nephew, who once sold night crawlers from drums salvaged from one GE plant, also died before their time.

“The river has decimated my family,” he said.

Dredging advocates say the PCBs have posed a significant health risk despite laws that forbid eating river fish. The catch-and-release law passed in the mid-1990s covers the area from Hudson Falls south to New York City.

They point to studies they say demonstrate that PCBs cause cancer in lab animals and are believed to be linked to premature births and developmental disorders in humans.

GE denies any connection between such illnesses and PCBs, which were banned in 1977.

“Twenty years of research has uncovered no credible evidence that PCBs are associated with any of 92 diseases that have been studied,” Behan says. “The increased risk comes only if someone ate a half-ton of Upper Hudson fish over 40 years. What kind of person would do that to begin with?”

But a study due out later this year, conducted by researchers from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, shows increased PCB levels and health problems in people who ate Hudson River fish.

The study examined 45 fishermen who consumed Hudson River crabs, eels and fish caught just north of New York City. “The more fish these people ate, the higher their levels of PCB,” Dr. Philip Landrigan said. “In my opinion, the greatest risk of PCBs is their likelihood to cause fetal brain damage. And, of course, there’s always the risk of cancer.”

Tim Havens isn’t holding his breath for answers from any study.

“My family’s lived here for generations and never got sick from cancer or anything else,” says the 39-year-old farm supply dealer and leader of an anti-dredging group. “These people are a bunch of hypochondriacs.”

Jim Duket and his brother, Claude, wish the federal government would just leave their river alone. For them, the Upper Hudson is a blue highway, a place where they can relax away their retirement.

“This river isn’t sick, so I wish all the enviros would just leave it be,” Jim, a 65-year-old former paper mill worker, said as he sat at a Schuylerville marina. “It would heal itself if they’d let it.”

Havens says GE already has paid a steep price for polluting the Hudson, contributing $230 million for such things as filtration programs for downstream communities that drink river water.

In a region where GE long has been a major employer, many residents argue that the company had legal permits to discharge PCBs. They reserve their anger for what they call the EPA’s misguided plan.

“The EPA is never successful in these projects,” says Havens’ wife, Jane. “It’s like sending a team with no wins all the way to the Super Bowl. They don’t deserve to be there, and they’re not going to win.”

Tim Havens, who denies claims that his efforts are funded by GE, says the river has bounced back from an era when a dye plant dumped chemicals that changed the water color daily. “It was so bad, I’m surprised they didn’t find rare diseases isolated to the Amazon River basin. But that’s the past.”

EPA officials say the dredging plan calls for the use of the latest hydraulic technology to lessen the dispersal of contaminated sediments downstream--a process that sucks up silt while leaving the surrounding water clear. As one local official stressed to residents: “We’re not going to use your kid’s Tonka toys.”

But GE ads, which claim the dredging will disrupt river life for a generation, paint a different scenario: that of huge clamshell dredges dripping contaminated sediment onto a waiting fleet of trucks.

Havens, who has not ruled out suing to stop the dredging, says the government is too impatient. “The technology to break down PCBs in their place isn’t too far away. Instead, they want to stir things up and send PCB-laden sediment downstream as far as New York City.”

He predicted that the project will knot waterways, creating a stench of rotting sediment that will scatter tourists and make life miserable.

As accusations fly, a local official guzzled a glass of Hudson River water before several TV cameras to show how safe it was.

Said a wincing Fuller: “Now how crazy is that?”