Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office issued the following:
April 11, 2019
“The EPA’s decision today is a failure of leadership by the Trump Administration to protect clean water for New Yorkers who are demanding a full cleanup of the Hudson River. The EPA’s job is to protect Americans from toxins in our environment, but today they chose to certify an incomplete job by a company that spent decades dumping a poisonous chemical into the Hudson River and fought relentlessly to avoid the responsibility for fully cleaning it up.”
“The job is not finished. The Hudson River is still polluted with PCBs. The ecosystem in and around the river is still a threat to our public health. The EPA is even admitting that it will likely take eight more years to collect enough data to know if the remedy is actually working and more than five decades before the river is actually safe. All of this is unacceptable, and in light of those facts, the EPA’s action today is disgraceful. Clean water is a right that we can never take for granted, and I urge the EPA to reverse this dangerous decision immediately.”
Senator Gillibrand Statement On Epa “Certification Of Completion” For GE’s Unfinished Hudson River Pcb Cleanup Job
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today released the following statement after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Certification of Completion for the General Electric Company’s (GE) unfinished work to remove the toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) it dumped into the Hudson River.“The EPA’s decision today is a failure of leadership by the Trump Administration to protect clean water for New Yorkers who are demanding a full cleanup of the Hudson River. The EPA’s job is to protect Americans from toxins in our environment, but today they chose to certify an incomplete job by a company that spent decades dumping a poisonous chemical into the Hudson River and fought relentlessly to avoid the responsibility for fully cleaning it up.”
“The job is not finished. The Hudson River is still polluted with PCBs. The ecosystem in and around the river is still a threat to our public health. The EPA is even admitting that it will likely take eight more years to collect enough data to know if the remedy is actually working and more than five decades before the river is actually safe. All of this is unacceptable, and in light of those facts, the EPA’s action today is disgraceful. Clean water is a right that we can never take for granted, and I urge the EPA to reverse this dangerous decision immediately.”
