G.E. Disputes Federal Finding That PCB's Are Flowing Down the Hudson

By Associated Press Copyright 1998 New York Times August 20, 1998

The General Electric Company today dismissed a Federal environmental study that showed that PCB contaminants were flowing downstream in the Hudson River rather than staying imbedded in the riverbed, as some scientists had contended.

After hiring an environmental consulting company to evaluate the data used by the Environmental Protection Agency in preparing the study, the company called the report invalid, saying its conclusions were "based on limited and selective data."

The E.P.A. report will serve as the agency's basis for future decisions on cleaning up the polluted river and, officials said, may prompt the agency to order special attention for the most heavily polluted "hot spots" in the Hudson.

General Electric contends that its efforts to control PCB leaks from factories and former plant sites on the river north of Albany are adequate.

"The E.P.A. report is fraught with tremendous uncertainty," said Mel Schweiger, manager of G.E.'s Hudson River cleanup project. "Because this issue is so important, the science must be of impeccable quality."

Mr. Schweiger called for an independent scientific peer review of the E.P.A. study before the agency makes any decisions based on its findings. G.E. is concerned that the Federal agency will use its July study to justify the dredging of contaminated sediments in the Hudson, a process analysts say could cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to the E.P.A. report, sediment samples taken from the same spots in 1984 and 1994 show that PCB levels have declined by an average of 40 percent. The agency said that means the PCB's have floated downstream, further contaminating fish and, possibly, people who eat the fish or swim in the Hudson.

The company has maintained for years that PCB's are being buried by new silt in the river and that contaminants in the water and fish have declined steadily.

"If PCB's are leaving the 'hot spots,' then the levels in the water and the fish would be higher, and they're not," Mr. Schweiger said.

Mr. Schweiger said the Government's study used too few samples to make scientific conclusions and compared samples that were incompatible.

To try to prove its case, the company hired an environmental engineering consulting concern, Quantitative Environmental Analysis, based in New Jersey, to analyze the data in the Government's study.

In sediment samples the consultant took from "hot spots" this year, it found a layer of at least three inches of noncontaminated silt covering the PCB's on the river floor.

Dick Stapleton, a spokesman for the New York regional office of the E.P.A., defended the study, saying: "Our report is based on the analysis of more than 150 sedimentary cores. We, too, found burial at some of those locations, but at the majority of the cores, we found PCB losses."

While Mr. Stapleton said the E.P.A. report would be subjected to a peer review next year, some steps may be taken immediately to control the PCB loss at spots where deterioration is worst.

Mr. Stapleton did not rule out dredging as an option. "We say that because the numbers are so high we'd be negligent if we ignored them," he said.

The PCB content of the Hudson is largely attributed to pollution from G.E. factories on the river. The substance, used as insulating material in transformers and other electrical equipment, was banned by the Government in 1977.

PCB's have been linked to cancer in animals in laboratory tests. E.P.A. officials said PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were probably also carcinogenic to humans, although scientific evidence on the theory is conflicting.

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