GE’s Hudson River Cleanup Isn’t Done, N.Y. Says in Suing EPA

(Bloomberg) -- New York sued the Trump administration for declaring that General Electric Co. had properly cleaned up PCB contamination in the Hudson River despite evidence that dangerously high concentrations of the chemical remain in the waterway and fish are still too toxic to eat.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave GE a certificate of completion on April 11, the same day that the agency’s five-year review found that the cleanup was “not adequately protective of human health and the environment,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, said Wednesday in a statement.

“We will not allow the EPA to let big polluters like General Electric off the hook without a fight,” James said in the statement.

The dispute stems from GE’s 2006 consent decree with the EPA in which the company agreed to remove polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, from a 200-mile stretch of the river that was contaminated during decades of GE manufacturing along the waterway. The cleanup project, at least partially completed by 2015, involved dredging areas from the river bed, restoring habitat and monitoring for improvement, the state said in its complaint.

GE said in a statement that the EPA reached its conclusion after conducting a comprehensive review of the Hudson River dredging project.

“New York state’s data showed that 99% of locations sampled in the Upper Hudson met the cleanup standard that EPA set,” the company said. “Environmental conditions in the Hudson will continue to improve and GE will continue to cooperate with both EPA and New York State.”

The EPA declined to comment on the New York lawsuit.

The state claims the Trump administration’s premature declaration violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act because it’s “arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.“

“GE completed remedial dredging in the fall of 2015, but EPA has found the remedy is not presently protective of human health and the environment,” according to the complaint. “In fact, EPA has concluded that it does not have sufficient information to determine if or when the remedy will be protective.”

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