One of the engineers reviewing the dredging project in Saratoga Springs this week expressed some skepticism that PCB removal in the Hudson River could finish by its the expected end date.
Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric Co. — the company paying for the cleanup — went through a litany of problems faced in the first year of the project, which wrapped up in December. While they differed on both the statistics of dredging PCBs and the corrective measures, presentations concluded that the cleanup will be finished in five years.
Paul Fuglevand, one of the seven members on the peer review panel, was skeptical that outcome could be achieved.
“Five years seems to be cast in stone but it doesn’t seem to match the site conditions,” said Paul Fuglevand, an engineer from Washington state.
The project was marked by several challenges, officials said, including a high river flow, unexpected spikes in polychlorinated biphenyls being dislodged and sent down river and large amounts of debris.
Hudson River Field Office Director David King seems to have taken the temperature of Fort Edward, the community where the cleanup is based. He said that while the project is designed to be completed by the middle of the decade, there’s an expectation that the EPA and GE finish the job as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The Fort Edward residents I have talked to about the cleanup say they want it done and done right so the stigma of being ground zero for the nation’s largest environmental cleanup project goes away.
“That’s the expectation out there in the public – get it done efficiently but do it in five years,” King said.
Source:poststar,February 19,2010;Image:Flickr,November 21,2009
