On Friday, May 15, the blue claw of a crane pulled the first load of PCB-laden river bottom from the Hudson River in Fort Edward. At about the same time, miles downstream, the Town of Halfmoon made good on a promise to its residents to stop drawing water from the Hudson, and instead turned on a feed from the City of Troy.
From now until the dredging stops, water will travel along a 4.5-mile pipeline before reaching the Halfmoon Water Treatment Plant, where the town will test the water and treat it, if necessary. Since the length of the dredging process and the amount of treatment the water will need is unclear an exact cost for the switch is unknown, though the town estimated that the cost could increase up to 25 percent. Halfmoon customers pay $3.35 per 1,000 gallons of Hudson water.
The water line cost $8.2 million, paid for by General Electric and the Environmental Protection Agency.
If the federal government and GE won’t step up and do the right thing, we will, said Halfmoon Supervisor Mindy Wormuth at a Thursday, May 14, press conference. `We feel it’s our responsibility to take care of this.`
Troy Mayor Harry Tutunjian said the city’s water system has enough excess capacity to service Halfmoon and a few other towns along the Hudson, and expects the city to make a $500,000 to $1 million profit from the deal with Halfmoon. He said monetary gain is not the goal, though.
`Dredging has been a contentious issue for some time,` said Tutunjian. `I commend any community that steps up to provide drinking water for its residents.`
GE dumped PCBs ` a likely carcinogen ` into the Hudson for three decades until 1977, when the chemical was banned by the federal government as a likely carcinogen. Under an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency, GE will dredge 265,000 cubic yards of river bottom by November, when the Champlain Canal closes. After an independent review of the operation, a much larger second phase could run until 2015, in which the river would be dredged all the way to Troy.
The entire operation will cost GE an estimated $780 million.
The worry in Halfmoon and in other towns along the Hudson like Stillwater and Waterford is that PCBs will be kicked up by the dredging process and enter the drinking water before they can be caught. The EPA will pay for the difference in the cost of an alternative water source, but only when the PCBs reach a level of 500 parts per trillion or when the dredging is happening nearby and timely testing would not be possible.
According to EPA Spokeswoman Kristen Skopeck, the first phase of dredging is happening too far upstream for PCBs to escape the water tests.
`In phase two when we are close to them, we will pay for it. We don’t feel they would have to use it for Phase One,` she said of Halfmoon.
The EPA will test the Hudson at Halfmoon and report the results to the town regardless, said Skopeck.
Wormuth said she isn’t convinced the Hudson’s water would be safe, even during phase one. She argued that there are no scientific studies regarding the long-term effects of low level PCB exposure, and said she doesn’t want the town to be a `guinea pig` in this regard.
`We don’t feel we should be exposed to one part per trillion more because GE polluted the river,` said Wormuth. `We don’t feel we should bear an increased burden because of that.`
The town does test for PCB levels regularly, and the water treatment plant has special filters. Before dredging, the PCB level was negligible.
Halfmoon hopes to recoup the cost of buying and treating Troy water through a lawsuit against GE and the EPA ` it was recently revised to drop a demand to delay the dredging, but still asks for compensation for the cost of alternative water for the entirety of the dredging process. If that lawsuit fails, though, the increased cost of buying Troy water would likely be passed on Halfmoon’s 12,000 water customers in the form of rate increases.
The affected towns along the Hudson were looking into buying water from the upcoming Saratoga County system in the future, providing the line could be extended from Malta, its planned terminus. Wormuth said while that option remains a future possibility, the town is happy with the agreement with Troy for now.
“