Contaminated Marine Sediments Assessment and Remediation (1989) / Chapter Skim
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PCB Pollution in the Upper Hudson River
PCB Pollution in the Upper Hudson River
Pages 365-400
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From page 365... ...
The canal enables small boats and barges to use the upper Hudson River between the Federal dam at Green Island and Fort Edward, where it cuts through the landscape in a northeast direction, away from the river, which swings west, then north.
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From page 366... ...
capacitor-manufacturing plants, one at Hudson Falls, which began using PCBs in 1947, and one at Fort Edward, which began using them in 1952 (Figure 29. Hydraulic Influences Downriver movement of PCBs in the upper Hudson is a function of natural sediment transport governed by water discharge (Turk, 1980; Turk and Troutman, 1981a, 1981b; Schroeder and Barnes, 1983a, 1983b; Barnes, 1987~.
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From page 367... ...
~ DA~4 LOCK C ~ _ ;~3\~ D ~ M I~__ — DAM DAM LCCK 6 SARATOGA _ SPRINGS ~ l LEGEND U.S.G.S. PCS STAT fON STILLWATER gna~, ~ mr~ ~ arN~;ELAER CO O~M LOCK ~ MEC HANICSVlLL£ V~ \ _ ~ LOCK M C n ~ ~ 11 , ~ ~ ~ .-— fEDERAL O^U ~ U S.G ~ GAGE W' -ER LIEl `" ~ ,,' TROY S~ FIGURE 2 U PPE R H U DSON R IVER BASIN FIGURE 1 The Hudson River Basin; the dashed line marks the limit of subbasin drainage area.
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From page 368... ...
7 lo 1985~14`dson R'wer al Waterto~d oaring station. d~a'.`a' area 4.611 #I mi 3000 ~ 1 1 1 1 1 1090 1908 I'lO 19Z0 1930 1940 AWES __ ~ 1g50 1960 t97O 1980 1986 FIGURE 3 Water discharge of upper Hudson River (expressed as mean daily discharge computed on an annual basis at Mechanicville (1888 to 1956)
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From page 369... ...
. The downriver changes in PCB concentrations indicate that the lowflow PCBs are also derived from the reach of the river between Rogers Island (Fort Edward)
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From page 370... ...
For whatever reason, from the USGS indicates that on the upper Hudson River since 1980, a pass-through type mechanism has been dominant (NUS Corp., 1983~. The PCB load transported into the estuary is acquired not from the Green Island Pool but rather from north of the Thompson Island Dam.
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From page 371... ...
24 ~ L 1 ? 126 1 77 78 79 80 81 11 LULL 77 78 79 80 81 LOCATION AND WATER YEAR Waterford FIGURE 6 Transport rates of PCBs in upper Hudson River during nonscouring discharges, Water Years 1978 through 1981, calculated by multiplying PCB concentration by river discharge at station indicated.
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From page 372... ...
IV-12) In analyzing the so-called "no-action" alternative as part of the management alternatives explored by NYS DEC for dealing with the problem of PCB-contaminated sediments in the upper Hudson, LMS (1978)
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From page 373... ...
The details of the lead pollution of the upper Hudson River are not known and have not been carefully investigated. Measurements of heavy-metal content have been made in samples collected near Fort Edward Dam and in the remnant deposits (Table 1~.
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From page 374... ...
ANTHROPOGENIC HISTORY The large-scale PCB pollution of the upper Hudson River can be resolved into two components: 1. introduction of PCBs into the river starting about 1950, and until 1973, the temporary storage of most of them in the first sediments they encountered, in the pool behind the Fort Edward Dam; and 2.
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From page 375... ...
Members of its remnant deposits subcommittee brought remnant deposits to the forefront of the thinking about the river by NYS DEC staff. Prior to this time, NYS DEC's view regarding the remnant deposits was to let them be eroded from their riverbank locations in a steep-walled, inaccessible bedrock gorge and be redeposited at Fort Edward, where they became more accessible and thus could be removed at least cost (MPI, 1975~.
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From page 376... ...
The committee unanimously recommended to Commissioner in June 1978 that the only feasible means for rehabilitating the upper Hudson River was dredging and securely encapsulating the contaminated sediments. The committee further found that not only was such action environmentally sound but that no other method could be considered as having reached the stage of engineering applicability.
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From page 377... ...
NYS DEC ruled that PSG must re-apply for a parcel close to the river in southern Fort Edward and the site for which the certificate and DEC permits granted by the first Siting Board in 1982 were voided by a 1984 State Appellate Court decision. Moreover, NYS DEC ruled that the application for use of Site 10 must request not just secure encapsulation, as in the previous two requests, but also must include available processes for stripping PCBs from contaminated sediments and/or destroying the PCBs, and it must deal with not merely the sediments from the 20 hot spots in the Thompson
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From page 378... ...
Accordingly, EPA's Superfund evaluation that recommended no action with respect to removing PCB-contaminated sediments in the upper Hudson River needs to be revised. A final factor in the delay over taking any remedial action with the PCB-contaminated sediments in the upper Hudson River has been the ambivalent attitudes of the citizens of Fort Edward.
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From page 379... ...
The significance of the Hudson River striped bass specimens was that they showed elevated levels of PCBs even before the Fort Edward Dam had been removed in 1973 and thus prior to the great downriver surges of PCBcontaminated sediments in 1974 and 1976. EPA Region II staff collected fish from the upper Hudson River, downstream and upstream from the GE discharge pipes.
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From page 380... ...
In order to obtain a clearer understanding of the nature of the channel-floor coarse sediments that had proved so difficult for Normandeau's coring attempts, Steve Selwyn and I used a box corer that he had designed and built to collect four samples from the Thompson Island pool between Normandeau transects 7-4 and 7-6, at Hot Spot No.
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From page 381... ...
~ 381 i.''' ~ ~ Jan '''I ~ An' _ -- ~
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From page 382... ...
PIN. 1 90~ ~ FIGURE 8 PCB analyses sediment samples selected from 312 short cores collected from channel margin flats along the upper Hudson River, grouped according to reaches (1)
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From page 383... ...
The numbers are total PCBs expressed as parts per million on a dry-weight basis. The large relief peel from station BC-ll gives a dramatic indication of the kinds of debris that washed into the northern end of the Thompson Island pool as a result of the 1974 and 1976 post-dam-removal floods.
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From page 384... ...
(1983) re-examined hot spots that NYS DEC had mapped in the Thompson Island pool based on the Normandeau I cores (1977-78~.
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From page 385... ...
- from contaminated sediments and water into various organisms and up the food chain to fish and from contaminated fish to
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From page 386... ...
. As noted earlier, EPA's Superfund 1984 ROD for the upper Hudson River concluded that human health was sufficiently protected in New York state by enforcement of the fishing bans and reliance on ''nature's remedy," which they took to be operating in the river to bring the average level of contamination of Hudson River fish below the FDA 5-ppm action level.
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From page 387... ...
02 2.7 59% as 1254; 27% as 1260; 84% as "vapor' UPPER HUDSON RIVER AREA Average Washington Co. offices (Nov 76 to Jun 77)
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From page 388... ...
Table 4 compares PCB concentrations in air samples nationwide with those found in ache upper Hudson valley. REMEDIAL/ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGI ES Evaluation Methodology Initally, NYS DEC and the Advisory Committee evaluated claims of new schemes for PCB destruction and evaluated them against the known engineering realities of dredging and encapsulation.
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From page 389... ...
Indeed, no increased levels of PCB concentrations were detected one mile downriver from the dredge. That highly contaminated sediments can be encapsulated securely was demonstrated when the highly contaminated sediments from the second cleanup of Fort Edward terminal in 1978 and from area 3A of the remnant deposits were placed in the new
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From page 390... ...
Basis for Choosing a Remedial Action The position reached by NYS DEC and the Advisory Committee is that any rehabilitation of the upper Hudson River has to begin with dredging. No in-river process is viable.
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From page 391... ...
The Advisory Committee believes that removal and treatment of these deposits are the keys to rehabilitating the upper Hudson River. Currently, the proposed hot spot dredging is the key to the future ultimate removal and/or PCB destruction of the remnant deposits.
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From page 392... ...
NYS DOT Dredging DOT dredging operations included routine channel maintenance and two massive clean-up operations at Fort Edward as a result of surges of remnant deposits eroded by floods in the Hudson River in 1974 and 1976. NYS DEC Remnant Deposit Actions (1975-1978)
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From page 393... ...
Miscellaneous Political Considerations No history of Hudson River PCB pollution would be complete without some mention of several political considerations -- changing governors and NYS DEC commissioners, the relationships between New York State and GE, the opposition to the proposed encapsulation sites by nearby residents, Congressman Gerald B Solomon's opposition, differences between upstate and downstate residents, organizational problems in state government, and the ambivalent attitudes of the citizens of Fort Edward, who favored beneficial dredging operations while opposing those related to rehabilitation.
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From page 395... ...
NYS DEC's attempt to establish an intellectual basis for the upriver PCB pollution situation does not include any effort to pressure EPA to carry out the terms of SARA and re-vis it its Superfund I conclusions. It is unlikely that NYS DEC can carry out any significant rehabilitation of the upper Hudson River unless EPA reverses its previous ROD and finds that the continuing downriver transport of PCBs constitutes a threat to human health.
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From page 396... ...
1985. Distribution of PCBs in the Thompson Island Pool of the Hudson River, PCB Hot Spot Confirmation Report.
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From page 397... ...
1978a. Phase I Engineering Report -- Dredging of PCB Contaminated Hot Spots, Upper Hudson River, New York.
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From page 398... ...
New York State Environmental Quality Review: PCB hot spot Dredging Program, Upper Hudson River, New York. White Plains, New York: MPI.
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From page 399... ...
1979a. PCB in the Upper Hudson River: Sediment Distributions, Water Interactions and Dredging.
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From page 400... ...
1981b. Polychlorinated Biphenyl Transport in the Hudson River, New York.
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