Science Gives Nature a Hand in Purging the Hudson of PCB's
Published: May 26, 1990
To the Editor:
In his May 8 letter, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan rightfully pointed out that PCB's [polychlorinated biphenyls] in the Hudson River are a continuing issue. General Electric is embarked on an extensive program to address this issue in an environmentally sound way. The company has invested $20 million, and committed $30 million more, to a research and development program to speed up a naturally occurring process that is removing the PCB's from river sediment in the upper Hudson.
Accelerating the natural process would eliminate the need to dredge PCB's. This, in turn, would avoid the significant environmental problems that accompany dredging. Unlike dredging, bioremediation should pose no risk downstream from stirring up the PCB's now in the sediment, would require no landfill to deposit them and offers a solution that permanently corrects the problem.
Among the advances:
* Researchers have achieved very encouraging results in biodegrading PCB's from the Hudson, under laboratory conditions, within four weeks.
* The organisms that cause the process to work in the river have been transferred to the laboratory and used in development projects - both at G.E. and at several universities. The next step is to complete the engineering necessary to put the accelerated process to work in the Hudson.
* G.E. is working with New York State on the steps necessary to carry out a pilot demonstration project of accelerated bioremediation in the Hudson during the third quarter of 1991.
G.E. believes this work will be successful. We have recommended to the state that a peer review group of independent scientists be established to evaluate the bioremediation program rigorously and to suggest improvements.
Meanwhile, the river is improving on its own. Core samples taken from the river bottom near Fort Edward indicate that up to 80 percent of the PCB's in the samples are experiencing some natural biodegradation. And Dr. Richard Bopp, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y., reports in the May issue of Natural History a ''dramatic'' recovery from PCB contamination. He notes that ''sediments from the mid-1980's have PCB levels about a factor of 10 lower than those deposited at the same site a decade earlier.''
Nature is reducing PCB's in the Hudson River. New technology can speed the process without causing other environmental prob-lems.
WALTER L. ROBB
Schenectady, N.Y., May 17, 1990
The writer, a G.E. senior vice president, heads the company's corporate research and development center.