The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued the final version of its third Five-Year Review Report (January 16, 2025) on the Hudson River dredging project. GE agrees with EPA’s assessment that additional data are needed to fully assess recovery rates, but it is clear from the data gathered to date that the remedy is performing in general accordance with expectations and results are moving in the desired direction.

The Hudson River dredging project removed the vast majority of PCBs from the Upper Hudson, led to broad declines in PCB levels, and is on track to deliver further improvements.

Click here to read EPA’s January 16, 2025, report.

Click here to read GE’s detailed comments on the draft report issued July 10, 2024.

GE’s Statement on EPA’s Hudson River Five-Year Review Report

The Hudson River dredging project removed the vast majority of PCBs from the Upper Hudson, led to broad declines in PCB levels, and is on track to deliver further improvements.

Background:

GE met or exceeded all of its obligations on the Hudson River dredging project.

• GE removed the vast majority of PCBs in the Upper Hudson.

• GE invested $1.7 billion in the project.

Dredging is working. It is producing the environmental benefits EPA predicted, including broad declines in PCB levels in water, sediment, and fish.

• New York State data shows 99.9 percent of sediment samples taken in the Upper Hudson are below EPA’s dredging criteria.

• PCB levels in sediment in the Upper Hudson have dropped as much as 92%.  

• PCB levels in sportfish have declined 91% since the 1990s, 65% since dredging.

• PCB levels in water are down as much as 79%.

GE’s work on and around the Hudson continues. The company is working closely with EPA, New York State, and local communities on other Hudson environmental projects, including the floodplains.

• GE looks forward to cooperating with EPA to collect additional data on the Hudson.

• GE is helping EPA study the Lower Hudson. GE will sample multiple fish species, sediment, and water from various locations between Troy, N.Y., and Manhattan. Three different sediment sampling programs will be undertaken, each at a different range of depths of the river bottom. Many major municipalities and industries discharged PCBs and other contaminants to that section of the river for decades, and EPA has said it is evaluating whether parties other than GE may also be responsible for contamination there. 

• GE will continue to monitor environmental conditions in the Upper Hudson and furnish the data to EPA and New York State.

• GE is continuing to work with EPA to collect data to determine if remedial action is necessary in the Upper Hudson floodplains.

• GE has worked closely with New York State for nearly 20 years to fund and support public education efforts on Hudson River fish consumption advisories. We will continue to closely coordinate with the federal and state governments to collect the data necessary for their ongoing fish consumption assessments.

GE agrees with EPA’s assessment that additional data are needed to fully assess recovery rates, but it is clear from the data gathered to date that the remedy is performing in general accordance with expectations and results are moving in the desired direction.

• As EPA has clearly stated, the modeling projections included in the Record of Decision were developed in order to compare the likely effectiveness of various remedial actions not to predict specific years in which certain PCB targets would be achieved by the chosen remedy. To cite these projections as an indicator of remedy failure is not scientifically valid.