PCBs -- TIMES UNION EDITORIAL FROM JULY 2006

ANOTHER DELAY -- Dredging the Hudson for PCBs has been delayed once again, this time until 2008

( Albany) - For those who have been reading our series of historical editorials, which appear in this space every Monday as part of our 150th anniversary celebration, today's entry must seem more than a little ironic. It lauds what appeared to be a milestone four years ago, when General Electric, under new leadership, made a clear commitment to follow through with dredging sediment contaminated with PCBs from the Hudson riverbed. But, alas, what seemed so promising in 2002 now seems to be a goal that is slipping further out of reach. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had agreed with GE's timetable estimate and that dredging would not begin next year after all, as had been planned, but in 2008, to give the company time to build a processing plant.

The delay had been widely anticipated, but it comes as part of a pattern that inevitably raises doubts that the project will ever begin. Governor Pataki spoke for many last week when he observed, "Each time the clean-up timetable is pushed back, people lose confidence that this important project will ever happen." And there could be legal delays as well, depending on how a federal court in Utica rules on the town of Fort Edward's attempt to oversee the PCB dewatering plant that GE will build.

There's no doubt that derdging is a massive undertaking, that large equipment must be built and put into place, and that some delays along the way are to be expected. But the project's original start date was 2005. Now it's 2008. As Mr. Pataki says, people start to lose confidence.

It was just four years ago that EPA and GE announced they had reached agreement on mapping the locations of PCB contamination. And as our Editorial noted back then, the major hurdles seem to have been overcome. We can only hope that the 2008 date will mark the final delay, and that our faith in GE's commitment, expressed in 2002, will not prove unfounded.

(originally appeared on page A6 of July 31, 2006 edition of the Albany-Times Union)