Posted on 10/06/2005 7:16:54 PM PDT by neverdem
Nearly three decades after PCB's were discovered in the upper Hudson River, General Electric made a binding agreement yesterday to dredge the dangerous chemicals from the river in one of the largest and most expensive industrial cleanups in history.
The agreement appears to end years of resistance by G.E. and initiates a process in which the company could eventually spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remove PCB's from 43 miles of river bottom stretching from Hudson Falls to Troy.
Work will start in the spring of 2007 and could be completed in six years, if there are no interruptions.
But there are no guarantees that the $700 million project will go smoothly, because the consent decree splits the cleanup into two phases. While General Electric has agreed to Phase 1, it will not make a decision about the second phase until the first is completed. The company also agreed to pay $78 million to cover government costs associated with the cleanup, on top of $37 million it has already paid.
General Electric used PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, in the manufacture of transformers. PCB's were banned in 1976, but the large amount of the chemicals that G.E. had discharged into the Hudson had settled into the bottom of the river, where they posed a continuing threat to the environment and to people who ate fish caught in the Hudson.
For years the company argued that dredging the river mud would cause more problems than leaving the PCB's undisturbed. Environmental groups and community organizations along the river claimed yesterday that the consent decree did not ensure that the entire river would ever be decontaminated.
Under the terms of the agreement, G.E. will dredge the heaviest deposits of PCB's, at a cost of $100 million to $150 million. That work, which is...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Drudging? Does Matt know about this?
Vain hope.
Of course it will. The PCBs will become suspended in the water, and then the lefties will sue GE because they dredged it.
Somebody please tell me if I am wrong. The PCB's are lying on the river bottom. Probably pretty harmless because they are sediment and just laying there. Now when they start dredging, they will stir up the bottom and silt wil be washed downstream expanding the contaminated area. Making things worse. Then just what are they going to do with the tons of silt that doesnt wash downstream? Sometimes if it aint broke , dont fix it.
First, the government gave GE permission to dump the PCB's in the first place. What GE did was legal and permissable. After the fact, society changes and decides that it doesn't want the PCB's. Who should pay, GE, or Society?
2nd. GE has made the argument that leaving the PCB's is safer than stirring them up. I don't know if that is true or not, but the same damn environmentalist who say dredge them up won't allow dredging of New York harbor because of the environmental damage they think dredging will do
All this suggests the main motivation against GE is just a shakedown.
"All this suggests the main motivation against GE is just a shakedown."
We have a bingo.
This looks like a really stupid move to me.
A shakedown without a benefit. Typical liberal attitude -- through tons of money at a "problem whether or not it will help.
it's a deep pocket grab. some unions somewhere cooked this up and some politicos went with it. sickening. ought to make for some interesting marine engineering, though.
" "All this suggests the main motivation against GE is just a shakedown."
A shakedown without a benefit. "
There is a major benefit from the Communism Lite perspective. America wastes the total amount of money in the settlement because the premise of the action is false.
If you are trying to handicap or destroy America - and they are - then you do it one industry or one large company at a time.
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Lest we forget...the asbestos fiasco.......another attorney welfare project!
Bad move, GE. You are just feeding the alligator.
They ought to prospect the silt for gold dust, throw the fish back, and no mercy for the crawdads.
I'm interested in those subjects, but I'm not about to register on the NY Slimes site.
LEAVE EM ALONE!!!
PCB's end up burried by new sedement and are best left be.
Dredging is just going to put them back into the water.
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