Fw: GARDEN STATE ENVIRONEWS 020220

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: 020220

: GARDEN STATE ENVIRONEWS

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:

: WOMAN LOOKS BACK AT HER TOXIC NJ YOUTH

:

: Date: 020220

: From: http://www.northjersey.com

:

: By Candy J. , Staff Writer, cooper@...

: Bergen Record, February 20, 2002

:

: Her body's betrayals, in her 45 years, range from asthma to

: infertility, from miscarried quadruplets to malformed organs. She

: wears a scar across her throat like a necklace that binds her to

: others who have had thyroid tumors removed.

:

: ne Antonetta traces her body's breakdowns to the smokestacks and

: pipelines of industrial New Jersey. Here in the most chemically

: contaminated state in the country, she ran as a child behind trucks

: spraying clouds of mosquito-killing DDT, splashed in waters polluted

: by factory waste, and picked berries along a fence bordering a nuclear

: plant.

:

: It was an ordinary New Jersey life: poisonous, in retrospect.

:

: " I think we, as baby boomers, have been the lint filters of the

: chemical age, " said Antonetta, whose memoir, " Body Toxic, " examines

: her toxic exposures in the Garden State.

:

: " We're the head lab rats, " she said. " After World War II, we

: discovered all these wonderful miracle chemicals - DDT got rid of

: mosquitoes so nicely, PCBs conducted heat and didn't burn. And little

: by little, many of these things were made illegal or banned. "

:

: Antonetta's book explores the connections between pollution and

: health that have troubled so many residents of this industry-laced

: state. Here in North Jersey, in towns from Wayne to Garfield,

: residents have long looked to the water they drink, the air they

: breathe, or the ground underfoot for answers to their illnesses. Over

: the decades, their questions have gone mostly unanswered:

:

: Did the radioactive thorium-laced soil in Maywood cause the 17

: diagnosed cases of brain and central nervous system cancers in women

: in the mid-1990s? Are the lead, mercury, and other contamination that

: spewed from a munitions plant in Pompton Lakes to blame for a rash of

: reproductive disorders, birth defects, and cancers, as 1,586 residents

: claim in a lawsuit that goes to trial in April? Did the 42 industries

: that encircled a panic-stricken Rutherford in 1978 poison the 29

: people diagnosed with blood cancers in a corner of that town,

: including the six youngsters in a single elementary school?

:

: " There was never any doubt in my mind, " said Vivian Cleffi, whose 10-

: year-old son, Jimmy, attended that school and died of leukemia 25

: years ago after 14 months of chemotherapy. " His cancer definitely was

: from chemicals, and the doctors told us that from the very first day.

: But we were told it was too hard to prove. "

:

: Sometimes, scientists can find that proof, as they did in a landmark

: case that showed hundreds of employees at Paterson's United Asbestos &

: Rubber Co. died because of exposure to the asbestos fibers. Attorneys

: later uncovered documents showing that manufacturers knew for decades

: that asbestos was killing workers.

:

: But most alleged clusters remain murky, haunting neighborhoods and

: towns where people suspect - but can never substantiate - the cause of

: so much suffering. Such was the case three years ago of the cancers

: among Wallington teachers, who worked a stone's throw from one of the

: nation's most toxic sites. State officials said the fears were

: baseless, and the site was deemed clean in 2002. Still, the worry

: there persists.

:

: " Many people say you can't make direct causal connections, " Antonetta

: said in a telephone interview from her office in Bellingham, Wash.,

: where she writes and teaches writing at a university. " Of course, you

: can't. You can draw implications, but you can be wrong. We can only

: say that people today are suffering from diseases that used to be

: really rare, that barely existed at all. "

:

: For years, chemical contamination in New Jersey has been unmatched in

: the nation. The state has more federal Superfund hazardous waste sites

: - 108 - than any other in the country. One mud-colored stream in Wood

: Ridge, Berry's Creek, recorded the highest concentration of mercury

: found in freshwater sediments anywhere in the world.

:

: Health officials here have compiled unusually high cancer death

: statistics for two decades. In 1980, a state commission dubbed New

: Jersey " Cancer-State USA. " Federal officials called it " Cancer Alley. "

: The most recent health report shows an increase in cancers among women

: in the past five years and a slight leveling off for men.

:

: " I'm tired of talking to the sons and daughters about how their

: parents died, or to parents about how their children died, " said Wayne

: attorney Jon Gelman, who has handled asbestos cases since the 1970s.

: " It shouldn't be the result of living in New Jersey. It's not so much

: what's happening today as what happened in the past. It's a legacy of

: toxic contamination. "

:

: In today's world, there is no escaping toxic substances, Antonetta

: said. For example, she has explored the effects of radiation

: contamination at a nuclear plant in Hanford, Wash., only to recognize

: a trait shared by some residents there: They too, bear the scar across

: their throats left after surgery to remove thyroid tumors. They refer

: to it as the " Hanford necklace. " Antonetta calls it her " Mona

: smile. "

:

: She says hers is the story of " a normal, everyday, commonplace New

: Jerseyan. "

:

: Doctors have removed numerous cysts from her ovaries, and growths -

: always benign - from her liver. She has endometriosis, an arrhythmic

: heart, and severe allergies. She suffers from manic depression - which

: she believes may be tied to chemical exposures - and she controls it

: with medication. Of the six women in her family who shared summer

: bungalows, only two have been able to conceive.

:

: " So many women I knew from the same area were dealing with these

: health problems, " said Antonetta, who has written three collections of

: poems in addition to her " environmental memoir. " " It was really

: important to me at the time to make sense of the chaos my body had

: become. "

:

: Though intensely private - she shuns photographs and most

: interviews - she describes her ailments in vivid detail. She conceived

: quadruplets spontaneously, an event given a one-in-500,000 chance, but

: lost them in the third month. Infertility followed, and doctors found

: that she had a malformed, double-chambered uterus.

:

: It was after her thyroid surgery - after many doctors asked when she

: had been exposed to radiation - that she decided to investigate her

: past. Six years ago, she began reading the literature of chemicals

: from the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, in which " DDT, PCBs, and

: nuclear power were hailed as friends of humanity, the things that

: would lead us into the future. The rhetoric was so powerful and

: sincere. "

:

: She turned to the chemistry around the bungalow on Barnegat Bay,

: where her family summered, as well as in , where she grew up.

: Her inquiry transformed what had been a childhood spent swimming,

: picking berries, and catching fish into, in retrospect, a decades-long

: toxic bath.

:

: The blowfish - caught, fried, and devoured - were snatched from the

: waters of Toms River, where the Ciba-Geigy dye and resin factory

: disposed of 14,000 barrels of toxins from 1952 to 1996 and where

: thousands of drums of Union Carbide company waste was dumped in 1971.

:

: The tart gooseberries - picked and popped into her mouth raw - were

: not only sprayed by DDT trucks and crop-dusters, but were picked along

: the chain-link fence of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, a

: facility nuclear regulatory reports show released radioactivity into

: the air in the 1970s and '80s, according to a scientist, Jay Gould of

: the New York City-based Radiation and Public Health Project. He is

: studying radiation levels in baby teeth collected from around Oyster

: Creek and other nuclear power plants.

:

: Antonetta had also drunk and eaten sediment from Denzer & Shafer X-

: ray, a negative stripping plant that leached lead, arsenic, chromium,

: and mercury into the water. The tap water " reeked, " tasting as if it

: were " pumped from hell's drinking fountain, " Antonetta writes. " We all

: developed an unaccountable taste for it. Uncle Eddie bottled it and

: drank it at home. " In 1984, the county told them the well was

: contaminated.

:

: Despite her research, she doesn't know whether the DDT exposure

: explains the endometriosis, whether any radioactive releases led to

: the thyroid tumors.

:

: " No one can explain what's wrong with anybody, " she writes. " Though I

: don't believe in coincidences of this magnitude either: clusters of

: children with brain disorders, toxic plumes and clouds, radiation

: spewing in the air. Every vital system of my body is disrupted: an

: arrhythmic heart, a seizing brain, severe allergies, useless

: reproductive organs. Either it's Sodom and this is the wrath of God or

: it's the wrath of man, which is thoughtless, foolish, and much more

: lasting. "

:

: Antonetta's achievement, according to The New York Times Book Review,

: " is to devise a literary voice for the people who live in such places,

: for the bodies that have been 'charged and reformed by the landscape'

: of pollution. "

:

: A voice, say, for the 28 women with leukemia in Garfield, Lodi,

: Wallington, and Hawthorne, a confirmed cluster that, in 1987, had

: suspected links to contaminated well water; or the 200 documented

: deaths from rare cancers over 20 years among people who lived near the

: site of the former W.YR. Grace & Co. plant in Wayne; or the girls

: raised near the Du Pont munitions factory in Pompton Lakes, who had so

: much lead in their bones they were advised never to have children,

: their attorneys said in 1997.

:

: Her book is a voice for Louise Torell, one of 484 plaintiffs from

: Maywood, Lodi, and Rochelle Park who sued the Stepan Chemical Co. in

: 1997, alleging that the company had improperly disposed of chemical

: waste and allowed it to spread. Many plaintiffs have died of liver,

: brain, or lung cancer.

:

: Was Torell's husband's cancer caused by radioactive thorium?

: " Probably, " she said. " Nobody's going to come out and say yes. "

:

: Dorothy Carlson's is a tearful voice. She tells of her father's,

: grandfather's and four uncles' deaths. They worked at the UNARCO

: asbestos company in Paterson along with hundreds of employees who

: would die of asbestos-related illnesses. Many of the wives, who did

: nothing more than live with their husbands and do their laundry, also

: died.

:

: " All I know is it is a horrible way to die, " said Carlson, of Vernon,

: who is still mourning the loss of her beloved father, who withered to

: 70 pounds and died of lung cancer brought on by asbestosis in 1983,

: and her mother, who died 16 months later of a heart attack, with a

: silver-dollar-sized spot of asbestosis on her lungs Most recently, a

: sister died of lung cancer, though no one can blame it on asbestos

: because she smoked.

:

: " Ours was a very tragic family, " she said. " Everybody wiped out by an

: industry when they were young. "

:

: The government acknowledged the danger of asbestos in the mid-1980s.

: But many others over the years have been unable to make such links to

: what they believe are clusters of illnesses,

:

: In 1978, the Rutherford case garnered headlines worldwide when the

: state confirmed higher rates of leukemia and Hodgkin's disease within

: a seven-block radius, a definite " cluster. " But further study failed

: to link the illnesses to a toxic source. A state DEP study concluded

: that nine known carcinogens were present in Rutherford's air,

: including benzene, a known cause of leukemia, but none in amounts

: large enough to do harm.

:

: " They referred to us as 'well-coiffed women in a state of panic,' "

: recalls Cleffi, who moved with her two surviving sons to County

: to escape what she recalled as Rutherford's toxic smells and burgundy-

: colored nights.

:

: She still has all the health reports in a file labeled " Cancer Town. "

: Cleffi thinks of writing her own book, but worries about revisiting

: the terrible loss buried under 25 years.

:

: Every week, state health officials receive calls from people

: reporting unusual " clusters " of illnesses. To link illnesses to a

: polluter is extremely challenging, said Jerry Fagliano, program

: manager with the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services.

: Cancer has a long latency period that can stretch for decades. Even

: when scientists can establish a group's exposure to the same source,

: it's difficult to re-create the intensity of exposures that occurred

: years earlier.

:

: In Toms River, Fagliano spent five years and $10 million to establish

: recently that girls whose pregnant mothers were exposed to air

: pollution from the Ciba-Geigy factory were 19 times more likely to get

: leukemia. Those whose mothers drank water from a particular well were

: six times more likely to be stricken.

:

: But even though researchers studied everything from dust samples

: taken from attics to computer models of how much contaminated tap

: water may have flowed into each home, the study failed to explain all

: the 118 cancers - including 16 deaths - among children in the area

: since 1979.

:

: Fagliano believes those connections will be easier to make as

: technology to map toxic spills improves and as more data on disease

: and pollutants are recorded. " It's not impossible, just challenging,

: very challenging, " he said.

:

: Antonetta just hopes they also focus on cleaning up to protect future

: generations, among them her adopted 4-year-old son.

:

: For now, she tends to her next work of non-fiction on the environment

: and to her body's now-predictable failures: " I walk around with these

: lumps and I think, 'Oh, more of the same.' Every couple of years I

: have surgery. I'm out for a week. It's no big deal. I get back on my

: feet. "

:

: And she wonders about the toxic surprises of tomorrow. " What, she

: asks, " will we create next? "

:

: * * *

:

: Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc.

: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:

: DROUGHT ON EAST COAST RAISES WORRIES OF WATER RATIONING

:

: Date: 020220

: From: http://www.nytimes.com

:

: By Iver with Barbara

: New York Times, February 20, 2002

:

: Clinton - Through the dry, cold nights and almost balmy winter days,

: across snowless mountains and under desert-blue skies, a

: record-setting drought has settled over the New York region and much

: of the East Coast, raising fears of a spring and summer of water

: rationing, dying plants and mud flats where water and life once ran.

:

: Water experts who have pored over records for precedents for the

: current situation are using words like " wild " and " scary. " Not only is

: the Eastern Seaboard feeling the effects of a dry fall and winter, but

: those are just the latest dry seasons in a dry spell that began in

: 1998. Unlike most droughts, the current one stretches in an almost

: unbroken line from Georgia to Maine.

:

: In some Northeastern communities, officials are comparing the current

: drought with the ones that parched the area in the early 1980's and

: the mid-1960's, and others are going back to the Depression and the

: end of the 19th century for comparisons.

:

: Yet even those benchmarks are different: the droughts of the last

: several decades were summer droughts, while this time, the dry months

: have stretched into the heart of winter, when the groundwater supply,

: which begins to subside in the spring, would normally be replenished

: by snow and rain.

:

: " Historically, when it was so bad, at least we had snow and ice in

: the wintertime, " said Shing-Fu Hsueh, director of water resources for

: the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. " But this year

: winter came and nothing happened. It's like the dry years simply

: continued nonstop. "

:

: Even above ground, the evidence of drought is everywhere.

:

: Last week, the water utility of Stamford, Conn., urged residents to

: reduce consumption by 15 percent. The Potomac River, around

: Washington, has been setting daily records for low water flow. A water

: emergency has been declared for the 15 eastern Pennsylvania counties

: along the Delaware River. Officials in Orange County, N.Y., say the

: drought is the worst there in 30 years, while New Jersey is reporting

: its driest January and February since 1895.

:

: " I would characterize our current situation as something I don't

: believe we have ever experienced before, and apparently it is not

: getting any better, " Dr. Hsueh said. " It is scary. "

:

: The East Coast is not the only part of the country watching the skies

: for rain or snow. The lingering effects of a multiyear drought are

: still affecting the Mountain States and Southern California. The

: Northwest and the Mississippi Valley, however, have received plenty of

: water.

:

: In the East, the drought so far has mostly meant inconveniences, like

: longer hikes to fishing holes. Here in western New Jersey today, Andy

: Henthorn and his son and daughter had to hike 200 yards over a crazed

: lake bottom to cast their fishing lines into what was left of Spruce

: Run Reservoir. Mr. Henthorn figured that the drought would have penned

: a whole reservoir's worth of fish into a pond nearly one-third the

: lake's normal size. But they still weren't biting.

:

: " I guess the water's too cold, " he said.

:

: Hydrologists know that the full effect of the drought will not be

: felt for five more weeks, when lawns, trees and crops begin to search

: for moisture in the dry earth. But botanists, wildlife experts and

: farmers are already taking sharp notice.

:

: " Winter droughts are still droughts, " said LeComte, a senior

: meteorologist at the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic

: and Atmospheric Administration. " I tell people, you look out the

: window and you don't notice anything unusual, but if there is low soil

: moisture out there and we don't get any in the next few months, we'll

: be going into a planting season with a problem. "

:

: That agency's Drought Severity Index shows conditions of moderate to

: severe drought up the Atlantic Coast, from the Florida line to the

: northern tip of Maine. Eastern Pennsylvania, the Hudson River Valley,

: all of Long Island and most of New England are in the severe drought

: category, meaning that one would be expected once in 10 years. New

: Jersey south of the Raritan River and a wide band covering most of

: inland and northern Maine are listed on the index as suffering extreme

: drought, expected only once in 20 years.

:

: And experts are concerned that the abundant bright, dry days of this

: winter, which seemed like such gifts to Northeastern residents, have

: already locked the region into a water deficit that cannot be made up.

:

: Kim Tripp, vice president for horticulture at the New York Botanical

: Garden, calculated that drought- stricken areas would have to get 15

: inches of rain over the next six weeks to bring the levels of

: reservoirs and groundwater up to average. But 15 inches is a third of

: a normal year's entire rainfall, about 44 inches, meaning that a

: complete recovery is all but impossible.

:

: " The timing is a problem, " Ms. Tripp said. " Spring growth is the time

: when there's a huge demand for water. It would take a miracle to make

: up the water deficit in six weeks. "

:

: It is not just farmers who have grounds for worry. Drought has

: already been blamed for pine beetle infestations along the Atlantic

: Coast, and inadequate water in the soil will stunt the growth of

: shrubs and bushes. Mature trees can survive two or three years of

: drought without serious damage, said Stuart Findlay, an aquatic

: ecologist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. But

: smaller plantings will need substantial watering to thrive just as

: restrictions on watering lawns and washing cars are being introduced.

:

: Wildlife also suffers, said Principe, deputy commissioner of

: the New York City Bureau of Water Supply. Lowered water levels in

: ponds and streams expose aquatic plants to freezing, and the loss of

: those plants, in turn, affects insect larvae and dragonfly nymphs that

: depend on them.

:

: " Small fish feed on them, and larger fish on the smaller fish, " Dr.

: Principe said. " That's the whole food chain. "

:

: Ralph Hoffman, vice president of the Ashokan-Pepacton chapter of

: Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit ecology group, said the fishing in New

: York State would probably be poor for several years. Even last spring,

: he said, streams were too shallow for rainbow trout to spawn. The

: situation was worse when the brown trout spawned last fall.

:

: " This spring, " he said, " the water tables on the streams are very,

: very low. There'll be less trout for years to come. "

:

: Wide swings in weather conditions, from drought to flooding, are part

: of the decades-long climate patterns linked to pollution from

: greenhouse gases, a contributor to global warming, said Janine

: Bloomfield, a senior scientist at Environmental Defense, a nonprofit

: group. But, she added, no single drought can be attributed to global

: warming.

:

: The absence of precedent for the current dry spell leaves water

: experts scratching their heads.

:

: " We really don't have the kind of historical understanding, the

: historical record to predict what might happen, " said Lent, the

: Maine district chief for the water resources division of the United

: States Geological Survey. " These are very unusual conditions. "

:

: Last year was Maine's driest in the state's 107 years of record-

: keeping. A report last month from the state's drought task force,

: formed last summer, estimated that Maine needed 150 percent of its

: normal precipitation in the coming months to bring the state out of

: the drought.

:

: " The chances of this happening are minimal, " the report said.

:

: * * *

:

: Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

:

: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:

: ROCHE PLANS AIR MONITORING TO SETTLE POLLUTION CASE

:

: Date: 020220

: From: http://www.nj.com/

:

: Star-Ledger, February 20, 2002

:

: Roche Vitamin is ready to put out to bid plans to construct and

: operate as many as four air monitoring stations in Warren County as

: part of a settlement with the Department of Environmental Protection.

:

: The stations will test for sulfur dioxide, mercury and various toxic

: organic compounds as well as recording meteorological data.

:

: Last night representatives from the DEP met with the Roche Community

: Advisory Panel to finalize plans for the stations.

:

: The four proposed sites are Belvidere High School, White Township

: Elementary School, the county administration building in White, and on

: top of 's Mountain in Harmony. Whether all these sites will have

: stations and the extent of the testing will be decided after the panel

: receives information from bidders on how much it will cost.

:

: Roche was fined $3.1 million in November for releasing toxic

: chemicals into the air. As part of the settlement with the DEP, Roche

: will run the air monitoring stations in the county.

:

: In addition, PP & L of Pennsylvania will contribute $100,000 to test

: for sulfur dioxide, a byproduct of its 's Creek, Pa., coal-

: burning facility. The panel also is looking into testing the levels of

: mercury, another coal-burning byproduct.

:

: The panel hopes to have bid quotes for the March meeting. The plan is

: to have the stations running by summer, said Steve Ross, the panel

: facilitator.

:

: The stations are one of four supplemental environmental projects

: designed to funnel fine dollars back to the affected areas in the

: county.

:

: Don , representing the DEP, called the plan in Warren

: " significant " because it is the first time the DEP is requiring air

: monitoring as part of a settlement agreement, and, therefore, it will

: be a model for future settlements.

:

: " It's important to the DEP to find out what works in these

: settlements, " he said.

:

: * * *

:

: Copyright 2002 The Star-Ledger

:

: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:

: NJ REPS. LEAD NATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL SCORECARD

:

: Date: 20 Feb 2002

: From: " Pringle " {dpringle@...}

:

:

: February 20, 2002

:

: Trenton - The New Jersey Environmental Federation (NJEF) today

: released environmental ratings for New Jersey's Congressional

: delegation based on the key votes of 2001.

:

: Overall the delegation scored well on the League of Conservation

: Voters' (LCV) 2001 National Environmental Scorecard. NJEF praised the

: delegation but also challenged it to do more given the State's

: environmental problems and DC's political climate.

:

: " We're pleased members of our delegation continue to be leaders as

: expected given our State's population density and heavy industry " ,

: stated NJEF Campaign Director Pringle. " However, since the Bush

: Administration and the Congressional Republican leadership oppose

: strong environmental and public health protections, our delegation

: needs to do even more especially in the upcoming Senate debate on

: clean energy and air. "

:

: A 100% score indicates the strongest voting record in support of the

: environment, while a 0% shows consistent voting against environmental

: protection. The Scorecard includes the most important votes - in this

: case 14 House votes and 8 Senate votes from 2001 - as determined by

: experts from 24 respected environmental and conservation groups.

: Highlights include:

:

: - NJ's delegation had the highest rating of any state with a bi-

: partisan delegation & the 3rd highest overall behind Massachusetts

: and Vermont;

:

: - Senator Corzine and Reps. s, Pallone, Rothman, Payne, Holt

: and Menendez were a perfect 100%;

:

: - Senator Torricelli & Reps. LoBiondo, Saxton, & scored in the

: `80's & /or provided key leadership;

:

: - Every pro-environment vote in the House had bi-partisanship support

: from NJ's delegation, except an amendment sponsored by NJ's own

: Rep. Menendez to restore funding cuts to environmental

: enforcement - while some Republicans supported this amendment, none

: of them were from NJ;

:

: - Pro-environment positions won more in 2001 than in the recent past

: (45% vs. 20% in 1999), but still lost more often than not, most

: votes were defensive (81% were on rollbacks as opposed to increased

: protections), and even when the environment won a vote, most of the

: time (75%) the Republican leadership, especially in the House and

: the Bush Administration, blocked its implementation; and

:

: - A tendency by some members to vote pro-environment more often when

: it mattered less - on the key House votes for New Jersey (votes 8-

: 12 & 14 on clean air and energy, arsenic in drinking water,

: enforcement and fair trade), Reps. Ferguson, Roukema, and

: Frelinghuysen's scores dropped precipitously (by 20, 30, and 30

: points respectively).

:

: " The 2001 National Environmental Scorecard shows that the best kept

: secret in America isn't that the environment has finally arrived as an

: issue that drives our national policy debate, but that is has been

: there all along, " said Deb Callahan, LCV president. " Votes to protect

: the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we love are also

: votes to create new jobs, reduce our dependence on Middle East oil,

: protect public health, and keep down energy costs for American

: families. "

:

: The bi-partisan nonprofit LCV is the only national organization

: working full-time to inform the public and hold members of Congress

: accountable for their environmental votes. The bi-partisan, non-profit

: NJEF has 75,000 individual members and an additional 100 members

: groups.

:

: League of Conservation Voters - NJ Environmental Federation

:

: Contact: Pringle, NJEF, 609-530-1515 or 732-604-0489

: Stoermer or Dan Vicuna, LCV, 202-785-8683 x599 or 573

:

: * * *

:

: NJ Environmental Federation

: 1 Lower Ferry Rd.

: Trenton NJ 08628

: Tel: 609-530-1515

: Fax: 609-530-1508

: Email: dpringle@...

: Web: http://www.cleanwateraction.org/njef/

:

: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:

: GE CHALLENGES EPA AUTHORITY TO ORDER HUDSON DREDGING

:

: Date: 020220

: From: http://www.newsday.com/

:

:

: Associated Press, February 20, 2002

:

: Albany, NY - Attorneys for General Electric, challenging the

: government's authority to order Hudson dredging and other

: environmental cleanups, argued in court that Superfund law violates

: the constitutional right to due process.

:

: " Everybody is coerced. Everybody complies, " said ,

: attorney for the conglomerate based in Fairfield, Conn., on Tuesday in

: U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

:

: GE argued that the law allows federal penalties while the company is

: unable to fight back, a " Hobson's choice " between costly compliance

: with what it might consider an invalid cleanup order or facing stiff

: penalties later.

:

: GE not only faces the Hudson cleanup but scores of other hazardous

: waste sites, according to the EPA, whose attorneys argued to have GE's

: case dismissed. Judge Bates reserved decision.

:

: The company's new CEO, Immelt, said last month that GE had

: set aside the money for the upper Hudson dredging. The cost has been

: estimated at almost $500 million for the multiyear project, now

: entering a design phase.

:

: A coalition of Hudson River environmental groups said in a friend of

: the court brief that the impact of a company win against the EPA in

: the federal court case would " significantly threaten ongoing efforts

: to clean up hazardous waste sites. "

:

: The 1980 Superfund law has withstood a half-dozen previous

: constitutional challenges.

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