Environmentalism on the Hudson

My primary responsibility at the Hudson River Maritime Museum was conducting research for the upcoming exhibit on environmentalism. The research I focused on was the history of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, commonly referred to as the DEC. My most important assignment was to create an extensive timeline of the DEC and its connections to the Hudson River. I started my work by combing the DEC website for basic information about its past. I actually found a timeline they had created, but it did not have enough information or detail to use as my main source. Instead, I was able to use it to pick out important years for the DEC and noteworthy events which I could keep an eye out for. The primary source of information I decided on was the New York Times archives. This began the most time consuming part of my research. I went through thousands of articles since 1970 which all mentioned the DEC at some point. The vast majority of these were useless for creating a timeline of important events, but some were very intriguing. One of the most interesting events I learned about was the decades long environmental battle to stop G.E. from polluting the Hudson and pay for its impact on the river. General Electric began dumping polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the Hudson in 1947, and continued to do so for thirty years. PCBs were waste products of electronics manufacturing, and it was revealed in the 1960s that they could cause cancer and were dangerous to the environment. PCBs killed life within the Hudson, and it made the water and wildlife toxic for humans. The DEC ordered G.E. to stop dumping PCBs in the river in 1975, but G.E. did not comply until 1977. The company had done a massive amount of damage to the river, and the state began its fight to make G.E. pay to clean up its mess. The state originally demanded $7 million as a penalty for the pollution, but after several months of negotiating, G.E. worked it down to $3 million which would go toward cleaning the river. Later, it was decided that G.E. would be responsible for dredging PCBs out of the Hudson. G.E. did not actually begin cleaning the river until 2009, when it began its first phase of dredging. The company conducted another cleanup operation in 2011, which finished in 2015. This does not mean that the Hudson is now clear of PCBs, it simply means that G.E. met the minimum requirements of its legal agreement to fix its mistakes. There are still PCBs contaminating the river, and G.E. is still fighting to do as little work as needed. This whole story is centered around the actions of a company which endangered wildlife and the people of the Hudson Valley and tried to shirk its responsibility at every turn. I saw this story unfold over decades of news articles about the DEC and its struggles to maintain a safe and sustainable environment in New York. The purpose of the exhibit at the maritime museum is to showcase these kinds of ongoing stories for the public, and hopefully enact positive changes for environmentalism.