Good news for a change.

YAY!

Just to keep things in perspective - all the stress here on the Hudson over our possibly-lost storage space wouldn't be happening if the Hudson was still the dead river it was, well within the memory of some of the more veteran paddlers in the area. The bad news all springs directly from the good news, which is that the Hudson has made a remarkable comeback since the Clean Water Act was enacted.

There's still a lot of PCB's left down in the muck from the GE plant, though, but back in 2002 the EPA decided that General Electric had to clean up their mess.

This is not a fast project, but somebody broke into the raging access debate on NYCKayaker with a great little good-news announcement. Nice break & I think everybody was ready for that - the debate's starting to feel circular.

This is just another little mile marker, long way to go but at least it's in the right direction - and if it wasn't for all of this, the Hudson might not be worth fighting to get to.



Alan J. Steinberg
EPA Regional Administrator
Court Approval of Hudson River Settlement
November 2, 2006

The United States is pleased to announce that today, the landmark settlement between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the General Electric Company (GE) for the Hudson River PCBs site was approved by Federal District Court Judge David N. Hurd. This allows the cleanup of the Hudson River to proceed. Under the approved Consent Decree, GE will construct a sediment transfer/processing facility in Fort Edward, NY and perform the first phase of the dredging of the PCB-contaminated river sediments, and may perform the second phase of the dredging as well.

Now that the court has approved the Consent Decree, we can all look forward to seeing the benefits of cleaning up the Hudson River. EPA will continue to work with the affected communities and other stakeholders as the implementation of the remedy proceeds.

You can read more about the PCB problems in the Hudson River on the EPA's Hudson River Superfund website.