John Cronin

Taking Questions on PCBs - Pt. 3

From June 17 - 19  I was the guest blogger on The New York Times' "Taking Questions" feature of its City Room blog.  The topic was "General Electric's project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River."   The Times asked that I respond to 5 reader-submitted questions daily.   Part 3 of the selected questions and my answers follows,  just as it appeared on the The New York Times site:

Because so many inquiries about swimming have been posted, I feel obligated to clarify and expand on the quick summary I presented in a previous post:

— John Cronin

Kristen Skopeck, the Hudson River community involvement coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, tells me that swimming also tops the list of questions she receives at her Hudson River field office at 421 Lower Main Street in Hudson Falls, N.Y. This is a measure of the public attention accorded the dredging project, as well as the widespread eagerness to enjoy the river.

The New York State Department of Health, lead agency for swimming and health issues, expects that during the dredging, PCB levels in the Hudson River will remain below the E.P.A.’s drinking water standard of 500 parts per trillion. It has issued no dredging-related health warnings for the river.

Taking Questions on PCBs - Pt. 2

From June 17 - 19  I was the guest blogger on The New York Times' "Taking Questions" feature of its City Room blog.  The topic was "General Electric's project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River."   The Times asked that I respond to 5 reader-submitted questions daily.   Part 2 of the selected questions and my answers follows,  just as it appeared on the The New York Times site:

Where will the dredge material be disposed once it is removed from the river?

— Posted by Dan

A number of posts have asked about the amount and destination of dredged material from the Hudson. Dan’s is the simplest (and he asked first). But I will try to cover all the questions here, so pardon the lengthy answer.

First, the full operation of coordinating, staging and executing the dredging and material processing is impressive. G.E. is mobilizing 17 tugboats, 35 barges and 12 dredges working 24 hours per day, six days a week to remove and process the 400,000 tons of sediment that Environmental Protection Agency is focusing on for Phase 1, which ends in November when weather closes the Champlain Canal.

Despite the world-class collection of heavy equipment, one of the most striking aspects of the operation is its relative quiet. Attention to details, such as “hospital-grade generators,” was an essential part of the project design agreed to by the E.P.A. and G.E. If you visit the dredging project, and I recommend it, don’t expect a cacophonous construction site. (Carpool, and visit Jim’s Broadway Café, or one of the many local establishments.)

Taking Questions on PCBs - Pt. 1

From June 17 - 19  I was the guest blogger on The New York Times' "Taking Questions" feature of its City Room blog.  The topic was "General Electric's project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River."   The Times asked that I respond to 5 reader-submitted questions daily.   Part 1 of the selected questions and my answers follows,  just as it appeared on the The New York Times site:

It seems I’ve known about this PCB problem forever, but I don’t really know the details. I recall that you were quite involved at the beginning of this process, so I’m hoping you will be able to answer my questions: when did the PCB contamination start, how was it discovered, and what have been the steps leading up to this final cleanup?

— Posted by Morna Crites-Moore

The best primer on PCBs and the Hudson can be gleaned from visiting the dedicated PCB web pages of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the General Electric Company. These are not necessarily dueling sites, though they may disagree on some points. You can put together a good regulatory time line as well as the current status of the cleanup from the information they present.

The PCB controversy has a long history. The issue first came to public attention in August 1975 in an article in The New York Times in which Richard Severo reported that the New York State environmental conservation commissioner, Ogden R. Reid, and the health commissioner, Dr. Robert P. Whalen, had issued a public warning to avoid eating striped bass from the Hudson River because of PCB contamination. Mr. Reid cited two General Electric plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls as a likely cause.

8 Presidents & 11 EPA Administrators Later

Thoughts on the GE Dredging of the Hudson

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

On August 6, 1975, Hudson Riverkeeper Tom Whyatt and I hopped into his VW bus and headed for EPA Region II headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan to file a freedom of information request for all documents related to the discharge of PCBs into the Hudson River.

We had learned that on August 8, in a story slated for the front page of The New York Times, Richard Severo would report a warning from New York State Environmental Conservation Commissioner Ogden R. Reid and Health Commissioner Robert P. Whalen that the public should avoid eating striped bass from the Hudson River due to PCB contamination. "Federal and state researchers have found that the fish contain dangerously high amounts of PCB, a toxic chemical used in a wide range of manufacturing processes,” wrote Mr. Severo, and Reid cited two General Electric plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls as a likely cause.

Thirty-four years later, on May 15, 2009, Andrew Revkin reports in The Times that General Electric has begun a massive dredging program to remove tons of PCB contaminated mud from the upper Hudson.  See Andy’s Times story here and his post on his Dot Earth blog here. 

Thomas Berry

1914 - 2009

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

On Sunday, May 31, Thomas Berry's sister Margaret wrote his friends that Tom was "sinking rapidly." On Monday, June 1, Margaret wrote again, this time to tell us that Tom had "died quietly at 6:25 AM."   To those who knew him, Tom was a towering figure, for more reasons than this space can accomodate.  Here are a few thoughts on the passing of a great and dear man. 

Twenty-five years ago, two friends and I sat with Tom Berry beneath a tree outside the farmhouse at Castle Rock in Garrison NY . . . sat and listened.  It was a beautiful, late spring day of azure sky amidst the Hudson River Highlands.  

For two hours, he removed us from the daily environmental politics with which we were preoccupied and spoke of the whole of life, particle to primate, each creature an elemental force without which Creation is incomplete.  Absent was the rhetoric of strategy and tactics, of winners and losers, of who is good and who is bad.  Instead, Tom talked of the human place, and of the transcendence of nature, of which we humans are an integral part, and to which we are meant to give voice.

He spoke of the human role in the universe story. "A story told by humans to one another that will also be the story that the wood thrush sings in the thicket, the story that the river recites in its downward journey," he later wrote in The Dream of the Earth.

Tom's fabric was a complex weave of spirituality, ecology,  morality, love of cultures, and a deep humanism. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Confucianism were among the myriad influences that provided the cosmological context that informed his world, and universe, view.