I’ve got to give the Albany Times Union a lot of credit for the beautiful new newspaper they produced today. I couldn’t even venture a guess what that new machine cost to purchase and install. It hasn’t however changed what I think of it’s Editorial Board. Reading the latest venture of the board’s ongoing jump on the bandwagon of whatever feel good story that comes along, I couldn’t help but wonder where they got their facts for this one. I was under the impression that the U.S. EPA was in control of the dredging operations that GE was forced into. If you haven’t read the full Editorial, let me share a portion of it with you that caught my attention: ”Other federal environmental officials have argued that an additional 136
acres of the river bottom, including part of the impaired navigation
channel of the Champlain Canal,
need to be cleansed of the carcinogenic chemicals that GE legally
dumped there decades ago. Otherwise, they warn, adjacent sections of the
river that have been cleaned up, thanks to four years of dredging,
might well become polluted again.” By other officials they mean the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin. and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. That’s all well and good guys. The reason adjacent waterway that has been dredged may become again polluted is if you attempt any upstream dredging. If you want to pay for the cost of determining if there is additional dredging needed, go for it. Now they have State Controller DiNapoli on their bandwagon seeminly making an attempt to make GE pay for additional study, and he’s willing to hold over their heads the almost $800 million that the state has invested in GE stock via the state pension fund. Again, if they (NYS) want to pay for the study, have at it. Let DiNapoli and Jeff Immelt (G.E. CEO) sit down and make a deal. I’d love to be in that meeting. GE has spent over $1 billion on the Hudson in the last decade, with lot’s more to spend according to the pact they have already entered into. How much is enough? If it were up to the a report from the Hudson River Natural Resources Trustees, we’d be dredging all the way to New York City. Why don’t you ask the people who live along the proposed new study site if they want dredging on their shoreline. Or better yet, ask the people who have already endured a couple of summers full of noisy, loud, dirty dredging, if they want to go through it again if upriver dredging occurs, and all the suspended solids end up in their backyard again. Or even better yet, get a group of dredging enthusiasts together and put them on a sludge barge for a couple of days, and see how that works out.
And that is “The Daily Take”