News about PCBs
2008
Hudson River Sloop, Clearwater by Manna
Jo Greene
The Hudson River PCB Cleanup – A Light at the End of the Tunnel
It’s been a very long time coming, but
there’s finally some measurable progress in the Hudson River
PCB remediation project. The problem of PCB contamination
has dominated the Hudson River Valley for more than 40
years. Listed under the Comprehensive Environmental
Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) on the
National Priorities List in 1984, this 200-mile stretch of
Hudson River is one of nation’s largest Superfund sites.
After much negotiation and litigation, in 2002 the US
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Record of
Decision (ROD) requiring General Electric (GE) to remediate
PCB-contaminated sediment “hot spots” along a 40-mile
stretch of the Upper Hudson, north of the Federal Dam at
Troy. Since then, the remedial design process has proceeded
slowly, often tediously, but there is now tangible progress
with dredging scheduled to begin in 2009.
More
PCB's - Mandatory Testing in Schools - New
York State
PCB's in New York
Schools More
August 8 - News and Observer Wade
Rawlins, Staff Writer Comment on this story
Polution Cleanup Will Take Longer
A large white plume of emissions rises
mysteriously near Raleigh-Durham International Airport,
leading some passersby to wonder for a moment whether a
plane has gone down. It's mainly steam vapors, however,
billowing from the Ward Transformer industrial site, where
environmental clean-up crews have begun decontaminating
thousands of tons of soil tainted with toxic PCBs.
More
March 8 - London Free Press
$56M PCB cleanup - Province targets London industrial site
containing 2,100 truckloads of contaminated soil
The Ontario government is sinking $56
million into an East London industrial site to rid it of
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
The commitment, tucked into a nook of Tuesday's provincial
budget, is intended to address a long-standing environmental
concern. "It's a huge amount of money," conceded Deb
Matthews, Liberal MPP for London-North-Centre as she and her
colleagues held a post-budget news conference yesterday. But
Matthews said the property at Clarke Road and Huron Street
still contains 2,100 truckloads of PCB-contaminated soil
dredged from the site and nearby Walker drain and
Pottersburg Creek. The soil is contained in four lined cells
on the property.
More
September 10 - Environmental News Service
EPA: General Electric Must Revise River Clean Up Plan
General Electric's cleanup proposal for
PCB contamination of the Housatonic River south of
Pittsfield, Massachusetts raises more than 150 concerns,
according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The
river sediment is polluted with polychlorinated biphenyls,
PCBs, south of the GE property where the company formerly
manufactured electrical equipment such as transformers and
capacitors. In comments sent to GE in a letter
Tuesday, the federal agency details issues that are
inadequately addressed in the company's Corrective Measures
Study, especially regarding impacts on the river ecosystem
during cleanup work, and impacts on aesthetic enjoyment of
the area by local residents. GE must now address the
concerns raised by the agency and submit additional detailed
information within 90 days. Following review of the revised
GE proposal, the EPA will propose its own preferred clean up
alternative for a final cleanup remedy.
"Cleaning up the portions of the Housatonic River south of
Pittsfield is one of the most significant environmental
challenges for this generation of New Englanders," said
Robert Varney, regional administrator of EPA's New England
office.
"It will be complicated and challenging for us to both
remove elevated levels of PCBs from the river, while also
protecting the valuable aesthetic and recreational values of
this beautiful rural waterway," he said. "We can all agree
that we need to do this work, and get it right."
More
June 17 - Environmental Protection Agency
U.S. EPA directs cleanup of toxic PCB’s at Greka site - PCB
contamination threatens endangered tiger salamander habitat
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has directed Greka Oil and Gas to thoroughly evaluate their
Bradley 3 Island facility and develop a plan to clean up
polychlorinated biphenyls at the site.
“The EPA is focused on ensuring an effective clean-up remedy
for the site because PCBs are a highly toxic substance,”
said Daniel Meer, Chief of the Response, Planning and
Assessment Branch for the Superfund Division in the EPA’s
Pacific Southwest region. “Greka is responsible for the PCB
cleanup, and the EPA will closely monitor their
performance.”
More
January 16 - Journal of Nuclear Science
and Technology
U.S. EPA directs cleanup of toxic PCB’s at Greka site - PCB
contamination threatens endangered tiger salamander habitat
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An Approach to Reuse of PCB-Contaminated
Transformer Oil Using Gamma Radiolysis
Basic Decomposition Property of PCB and 1,2,4-Trichlorobenzene
under Gamma Ray Irradiation
The radiolytic decompositions of low-concentration
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) and 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene (TCBz) in a transformer oil have been studied
using a 60Co gamma ray irradiation facility.
Significant decompositions of PCB and TCBz were observed in the
oil at tens of kGy absorbed dose
without any additive. We derived the required dose for KC500
decomposition in transformer oil using a
power function, which indicates that oil with lower PCB
concentration needs less dose to treat PCB
wastes. We also observed that the gamma radiolyses of PCB and
TCBz did not affect each other; the
decompositions of PCB and TCBz proceed independently. Both PCB
concentration analysis and total
chlorine mass concentration analysis indicated that most
dechlorinated chlorine atoms react to generate
other chlorine compounds in the oil. We found that the gamma
radiolysis without additional compounds
in the oil can be a useful way of reusing PCB-contaminated
transformer oil.
More
May 9 2008
Cleaning up Pottersburg - What you need to know - Public
Information Session
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History of the PottersburgCreek
Cleanup
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Ongoing, safe storage of PCBs at the
site
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Decommissioning of the
PottersburgPCB Storage Site
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PCBs and your health
More
Guidelines
on PCBs from the Office of Solid Water and Emergency Response (OSWER)
More
June 25th, 2008 - EP Online
(Environmental Protection)
EPA Directs PCB Cleanup at Greka
Site
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has directed Greka Oil and Gas to thoroughly evaluate their
Bradley 3 Island facility and develop a plan to clean up
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at the site.
"The EPA is focused on ensuring an
effective clean-up remedy for the site because PCBs are a
highly toxic substance," said Daniel Meer, chief of the
Response, Planning and Assessment Branch for the Superfund
Division in the EPA's Pacific Southwest region. "Greka is
responsible for the PCB cleanup, and the EPA will closely
monitor their performance."
During a heavy rainstorm on Jan. 26,
2008, a power pole with three PCB-contaminated transformers
collapsed inside the facility and released its contents. The
oil inside the transformers was contaminated with low levels
of PCBs. The contaminated oil mixed with rainwater and
spread throughout the site, also migrating into the adjacent
creek.
More
June 26th, 2008 - Connecticut Public
Broadcasting Network
Connecticut's Environmental
Commissioner Criticizes G.E. Clean-up Plan
Commissioner wants people to be able to
eat the fish from the Housatonic
Site of the GE Building 68 PCB spill
into the Housatonic River: Photo from EPAThe U-S
Environmental Protection Agency is expected to respond to
General Electric’s proposal for cleaning up the Housatonic
River by mid-June. But Connecticut’s environmental agency
isn’t satisfied with the company’s proposal.
Back before the mid-1970s when Congress
banned polychlorinated biphenals or PCBs, they were used in
the manufacturing of electrical transformers. General
Electric used them at its plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
and released the toxin into the Housatonic River. As part of
a clean up agreement G.E. submitted a proposal to the E.P.A.
this spring for removing PCBs from the river south of
Pittsfield. The company is not proposing removing PCBs from
the Connecticut section of the river, where the PCB levels
are considered low.
More
June 26th, 2008 - Natural Resources
Defense Council
Historic Hudson River Cleanup to
Begin After Years of Delay, But Will General Electric Finish the
Job?
Under the EPA’s unusual agreement with General Electric, the
company could escape full responsibility for cleaning up the
toxic mess it made in the Hudson River.
After 30 years of struggle, it seemed that the concerns of
local people had finally triumphed over corporate interests
in one of the signature battles of the modern environmental
movement — the fight to remove toxic PCBs from New York’s
Hudson River. In 2002 a landmark EPA decision spurred
General Electric, the company that had dumped as many as 1.3
million pounds of cancer-causing PCBs into the Hudson, to
create a plan to remove its toxic mess from the river. This
historic victory is now tinged with uncertainty, as the EPA
and GE have reached a settlement that allows the company to
back out after removing only 10 percent of the contaminated
sediment targeted for removal, leaving the remainder of the
cleanup in doubt.
More
June 17th, 2008 - Post Crescent
Regulators back faster, less costly PCB cleanup for Little Lake
- Series of changes to save $42 million
TOWN OF MENASHA — The Environmental
Protection Agency and state Department of Natural Resources
Monday approved a series of changes to speed the cleanup of
PCBs from Little Lake Butte des Morts. The revised cleanup
plan allows the placement of sand and gravel caps over
low-level PCB deposits where dredging would be difficult,
avoiding $42 million in additional costs.
“The approved plan is equally protective
of human health and the environment,” the EPA said. “It will
take less time to complete and create less noise and truck
traffic.”
The six-year, $102 million government-ordered cleanup is
designed to lower the level of PCB exposure to the fish
population. The cleanup began in 2004 and has focused on
dredging and sending PCB-contaminated sendiment to
landfills.
Jim Hahnenberg, remedial project manager
for EPA Region 5, said Monday that 75 percent of the PCBs
would be dredged and 25 percent would be covered or capped
in place. The original 2002 cleanup plan called for all
dredging.
More
June 12th, 2008 - EPA
EPA: Design Changes at Little Lake Butte Des Morts PCB Cleanup
Approved
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 and Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources have approved a series of
cleanup design changes at an ongoing cleanup of
PCB-contaminated sediment in Wisconsin’s Little Lake Butte
des Morts. A public comment period was held this past
winter.
Little Lake Butte des Morts is known as Operable Unit 1 of
the Lower Fox River cleanup effort, which is a proposed
Superfund National Priorities List site. Cleanup work began
at the lake in 2004 and is expected to continue into 2009.
The changes all involve work that has yet to be completed.
Operable Units 2 through 5 include the stretch of the river
from Appleton to Green Bay.
More
June 6th, 2008 - Columbia Fish & Wildlife
News Bulletin
Data From Ongoing PCB Cleanup Below Bonneville Shows Most
Contamination Out of System
Preliminary data from analysis of sediment, clams and
crayfish collected below the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam
show few signs of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl), an
indication that an ongoing cleanup/investigation of
hazardous waste is on target.
“It means that we’ve gotten most of the
PCBs out of the system,” said project manager Mark Dasso of
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dam.
The Corps last fall completed the
removal of 65 tons of sediment from a 0.83-acre area along
the shoreline of Bradford Island, an oblong piece of land
near the Oregon shore that anchors the north end of the
hydro project’s first power house and the south end of its
spillway.
More
April 22, 2008 - London Free Press
Data From Ongoing PCB Cleanup Below Bonneville Shows Most
Contamination Out of System
With $56 million to clean up a
PCB-contaminated site in London and $2 million to destroy a
half-million illegally dumped tires near Melbourne, the
region has scored virtually all the money allocated in
Ontario’s latest budget for environmental fixes. (Fee for
article)
More
April 22, 2008 - London Free Press
Data From Ongoing PCB Cleanup Below Bonneville Shows Most
Contamination Out of System
With $56 million to clean up a
PCB-contaminated site in London and $2 million to destroy a
half-million illegally dumped tires near Melbourne, the
region has scored virtually all the money allocated in
Ontario’s latest budget for environmental fixes. (Fee for
article)
More
June 18, 2008 - New York Times
Tons of PCBs May Come
Calling at a Down-at-the-Heels Texas City
PCBs from Mexico could be incinerated
near Port Arthur.
Built on a gush of oil wealth, Port Arthur eventually wooed
chemical and waste plants as well. But since the 1970s, this
city, which is majority African-American, has complained
that it has become a dumping ground for the nation’s toxic
waste. Now, if a French-owned waste management company has
its way, the Port Arthur area will be the final destination
for 40 million pounds of toxins from Mexico. “Bring it all
to southeast Texas,” Hilton Kelley, a community activist,
said wryly. “Who’s next? Germany? Finland? England? Aren’t
our oil refineries and chemical plants enough? We have a
right to a clean environment, and the nation sees us as
expendable in the name of big business.”
More
2007
December 6 2007 - The Oregonian
Alcoa PCB
removal goal for Columbia River set at 95 percent
Alcoa's planned Columbia River dredging next
fall will remove as much as 95 percent of the known
polychlorinated biphenyls in the river at the company's former
aluminum smelter site, the Washington Department of Ecology said
today. The Pittsburgh-based company agreed last month to remove
freshwater clams from the river at the Lower River Road property
and do the dredging, but the company and state reached an
agreement about the cleanup goals this week. When dredging is
complete and the ecosystem has restored itself, the residual
contamination should not exceed 98 parts per billion of
polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, said Kim Schmanke, an
Ecology Department spokeswoman.
More
October 19 2007 - Milwaukee World
FOX CITIES
MAY PAY FOR PCB CLEANUP
The cleanup that never began is the story
that never ends. It is the tale of the Fox River, and the
decades-long battle over its remediation. The players are
familiar, for the most part – the paper companies that used
Polychlorinated Biphenyls from the 1950’s until they were
outlawed in 1971, and their insurers at the time who have been
determined to also bear responsibility for the costs of the
cleanup. However, as the deadline for beginning the cleanup
approaches, and as both the Department of Natural Resources and
the Environmental Protection Agency begin to press for action to
commence, another potentially responsible party is on the verge
of being identified. That party is our old friend The Taxpayer,
this time in his guise as a customer of the same sewerage
utilities that processed the paper mill wastes that polluted the
bottom of the Lower Fox River and Green Bay.
More
October 11 2007 -
ICompliance Network
EPA
Transfers Management of PCB Cleanup and Disposal Program
The United States Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) announced that the management of the
polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) cleanup program and most of the
PCB disposal program is being transferred from the Office of
Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) to the
Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER). The final
rule enacting the transfer was published in October 9, 2007
Federal Register (72 FR 57235). The final rule makes minor
amendments to 40 CFR parts 750 and 761, to update certain
titles, organization references, and mailing and website
addresses so that required procedures for providing information
and seeking approvals will be consistent with EPA’s new internal
organization for managing the PCB program.
More
May 1 2007 - New York Times
G.E. Moves
Ahead on Removal of PCBs From 2 Rivers, but Frustration Remains
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — More than 30 years have
passed since Congress banned a broad range of synthetic
compounds called PCBs. Yet 2.65 million cubic yards of mud on
the bottom of the Hudson River remain contaminated with the
chemicals, which are considered neurotoxins and probable human
carcinogens. David Gibbs, left, in his backyard near the G.E.
plant in Pittsfield with Tim Gray, executive director of the
Housatonic River Initiative. Since 2002, General Electric has
been under federal order to clean approximately 40 miles of the
Hudson where its factories discharged PCBs. Preliminary site
clearing for the huge project began last week, but actual
dredging will not start until 2009 at the earliest.
More
Evaluation of PCB Concentrations on Site
On May 1, 2007 the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency awarded a Phase II contract through the Small
Innovation Research Program to Eltron Research Inc. of Boulder,
Colorado. Eltron is developing a portable real time sensor that
can be used on site to not only identify which PCBs are present
but also quantify PCB concentration. It is anticipated that the
global market for this type of instrumentation will be $ 120
million within the next 2 years.
Download PDF
Mother Nature to the Rescue?
PCB contamination of epidemic proportion
remains some 30 years after commercial production was
terminated. The remnants from the production is millions of
pounds of contaminated soil, water and air. The market for
removal of this environmental hazard has been estimated to be as
much as $40 billion USD.
Physical methods for isolating and
destroying PCB compounds are fraught with limitations.
Significant research continues to find a superior method for
removal of this hazardous waste.
The work of Professor Donna Bedard in the
Department of Biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
provides an exciting solution taking advantage of the power of
mother nature. Bedard and colleagues writing in Applied and
Environmental Microbiology (Vol. 72, No. 4 pp. 2460-2470) have
isolated bacterium exposed to high concentrations of PCB from
the upper Housatonic River in Western Massachusetts. This river
is contaminated with up to 668 mg/kg of Araclor 1260 the
Monsanto PCB compound which is 60% by weight. These have
isolated Dehalococcoides species as the organisms involved in
the detoxification process. Increasing the concentration of the
Araclor 1260 in their system increased the rate of
dechlorination by a factor of more than 20 fold. The specificity
of dechlorination involves removal of the chloride ion from both
the para and meta position on the phenyl groups and this ion is
then replaced with hydrogen. This group is now working to
identify the specific dehalogenase enzyme responsible for
cleavage of the PCB molecules.
This
scanning electron micrograph of Dehalococcoides (Dhc) bacteria
shows the GT strain of the microbes that dechlorinated PCB
contamination in lab tests.
The discovery is a first step toward a
bioremediation strategy that would naturally detoxify PCBs
without risky removal of the sediments in which they persist.
The research results were published April 15 in the journal
Applied and Environmental Microbiology. (Vol. 73, No. 8 pp. pp.
2513-2521, 2007) The Dehalococcoides Population in Sediment Free
Mixed Cultures Metabolically Dechlorinates the Commercial
Polychlorinated Biphenyl Mixture Aroclor 1260.
The goal of the next step in research is to
determine if bioremediation can be achieved using bacteria in
the same method that microbes are currently being used to
degrade other environmental hazards. The approach will follow
that taken in finding a bioremediation process the destroy the
common solvents tetrachlorethane (PCE) and trichlorethaene (TCE)
which were used in drying cleaning operations and for degreasing
of metal components and which contaminated subsurface
environments and groundwater until methods were identified to
remove them.
More
EPA Reaches Agreement with GE to Reduce Exposure to PCBs in
Upper Hudson Floodplain (July 2007)
EPA has reached an agreement with General
Electric Company (GE) requiring them to reduce exposure to PCBs
in four general areas along the Upper Hudson River where
elevated levels of PCBs in floodplain soils could potentially
present an unacceptable risk to public health and the
environment. The work, expected to begin next month, will be
performed by GE on about a dozen public and private properties
in the towns of Fort Edward, Northumberland and Greenwich and in
the village of Schuylerville. EPA will oversee GE’s work. The
agreement requires GE to reimburse EPA for the cost of
overseeing the work. More
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