DEP reservoir status report excerpt, October 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Hudson River weasels the city and the nation, the events of Sept. 11 were apocalyptic. ) X To General Electric, they apparently were a convenient diversion. Since that day, GE has held at least two closed-door meetings in V^h- ington with the Environmental Protection Agency to discuss Hudson River dredging. The company has been told by the feds to remove the poisonous chemicals it dumped in the water over 35 years, but state officials and environmental advocates fear it is trying to undermine the directive. Under cover of a distracted public. For shame! says GE. Also for shame! sa^ the EPA They would nev­ er think of such a ploy. But then, GE also would never have thought of cleaning the river if it hadn’t been told to. And it has continued to fight M the project tooth-and-nail, even after ERA Administrator Christie Whitman announced she would push ahead with it. g Z The recent meetings reportedly concerned performance standards GE would have to meet in the $460 million cleanup. Dredging support­ 5 ers surest GE wants to create a project so complicated that it be­ I comes impossible to fulfill and eventually dies. GEnnd the EPA_deny nefarious motives. But listen to EPA spokes­ woman Tina Kreisher; “The dredging will go forward, but surround­ ing us is this National Academy of Sciences study ... so no one’s quite sure that this is the answer ... do we commit ourselves that § we’re going to see this through to the end, dredge every last piece of VN oi material out of the Hudson whether or not it helps the environment? . . . We’re going to examine it as we go.” This is called hedging. c jO Sounds like GE’s been doing a lot of shmoozing over at EPA Sounds o like Whitman has been listening. If the former New Jersey governor, § who built a reputation on enviroiunental issues, allows GE to weasel out § of its obligation, she can kiss her aspirations goodbye. •c w As for GE, it donated $10 rniUion to the Trade Center victims’ fund. o Nice. But good corporate citizens don’t just shell out the bucks; they take responsibility for the messes they’ve created.

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