Injury Determination Report Hudson River Surface Water Resources. Hudson River Natural Resource Damage Assessment.

摘要

This study evaluates the water column of the Hudson River, extending from Hudson Falls to the Battery in New York City, a distance of approximately 200 miles. This portion of the river is an important natural, historical, and cultural resource. Since the mid-1970s, federal and state agencies and the General Electric Company (GE) have collected over 9,000 water samples from the Hudson River and have tested these samples for PCBs. Approximately 80.5 percent of samples in the consolidated database contained PCBs, often at concentrations an order of magnitude or more above relevant state and federal regulatory criteria. These exceedances have occurred throughout all parts of the river and for every year sampled. Altogether, these exceedances of water quality standards demonstrate that Hudson Rivers surface water has been and continues to be injured as a consequence of PCB exposure. These injuries are expected to continue into the future. About 19.5 percent of the samples did not contain detectable concentrations of PCBs, likely because the collection and/or analytical methods were not sufficiently sensitive to detect the PCB concentrations present.