How PCB Cleanup Will Operate
posted by TJE @ 5:42 AM
Hudson River Blog
Created by a sophomore seminar at Hamilton College, this blog considers the past, present, and future of the Hudson River, once described by Robert Boyle as "the most beautiful, messed up, productive, ignored, and surprising piece of water on the face of the earth."
Friday, February 23, 2007
Hudson River Blog
Created by a sophomore seminar at Hamilton College, this blog considers the past, present, and future of the Hudson River, once described by Robert Boyle as "the most beautiful, messed up, productive, ignored, and surprising piece of water on the face of the earth."
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- PCB Update
- Forbes says NY State is Hot for Jobs
- The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You
- The Real Riots
- A Floating Museum
- Water Crisis in Newburgh
- Lawsuit over Mercury
- Follow the Art
- Weekend Trip
- The Onrust Reborn
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1 Comments:
This article describes all of the steps that are required for dredging in the Hudson River. It is another reminder of just how much work this project is going to take. For example, a dewatering and processing facility with electricity, plumbing, and roads needs to be built. All of the sediment that is taken out of the river will dewatered; the water must then be treated before being discharged back into the Champlain Canal.
Disposal of the sediment is the next energy intensive process. To start, seven miles of railroad track need to be built to connect the facility to existing railways. Then the sediment needs to be transported to landfills that are appropriate for varying concentrations of PCBs. The only facilities suitable for disposal of sediments with the the highest PCB concentrations are in Texas, Michigan, Oregon, and Utah. Facilities for disposal of sediments with lower PCB concentrations are in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia. It will take a lot of energy to ship the heavy sediment all over the country.
Adding up the environmental costs of development, energy expenditure, and ecological disruption makes it difficult for anyone to say with conviction whether dredging is the best solution to this problem. The question of to dredge or not to dredge aside, there is an important lesson to be learned here; we should make every effort to reduce our environmental impact in the first place. Dredging the Hudson is ecologically and economically costly; leaving PCBs in the Hudson is ecologically and economically expensive as well. We could save both damage to the environment and the cost of later cleaning up our own mess by reducing pollution immediately.
I can't help but think of the problem of climate change when I consider the costs and benefits of dealing with a problem later versus preventing the problem now. Many reports have agreed that the ecological cost plus economic cost of climate change is going to be astronomical. It seems logical, then, to work to abate carbon dioxide emissions immediately. However, given the short-sighted nature of the way we view problems, our society hasn't attacked global warming as forcefully as it needs to be attacked. In both the case of PCBs in the Hudson and carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming, our inability to foresee and adress the long term ecological and economic consequences has made costs higher than they would be had we adopted a preventative attitude in the first place.
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