Connecticut Thinks GE's PCB Cleanup Plan for the Housatonic Isn't Good Enough

Thirty-plus years after General Electric stopped putting PCBs -- a probable carcinogen that also probably causing learning disabilities -- into the Housatonic River, Connecticut health officials still have broad "eat none" advisories for women of childbearing years and children who are under the misimpression that eating fish is healthful. 

Thirty years later you still need to be careful if you want to eat a striped bass, which are more abundant now in Long Island Sound and its bigger tributaries than they have been in decades.

And yet GE -- Generous Enormous, as a wry friend in college used to call them -- still isn't making good on its obligation to get PCBs out of the Housatonic, as you can see from this story on Connecticut Public Broadcasting.

The Maritime Aquarium invited GE's environmental lawyer to participate in a forum about the future of Long Island Sound the other day. Gina McCarthy, Connecticut's DEP commissioner, who thinks the PCB plan stinks, was part of the panel too. No indication from this that anyone challenged mentioned the multinational's role in endangering our health.

Striped Bass, PCBs, General Electric, Unsafe Fish, the Maritime Aquarium

If I had more time and patience, and lived closer to the shore, maybe I'd learn how to fish. One of the guys who works at our local grocery store caught an enormous stiped bass the other day and was selling fillets from the fish counter. We bought one. It was good. I'd love to be able to go to the beach, cast into the surf, and catch a striper or a bluefish, or even a fluke, assuming you can catch fluke from the beach.

Now would be a good time to try it. Blogs (like this one) and newspaper fishing columns are reporting that things are picking up. This from Newsday:

The City Island open boat, Island Current, has used bunker chunks to hammer bass to 48 pounds, along with tons of bluefish, halfway between Manhasset Bay and Rye Beach. Mark Gurleski, a mate with R & G Charters in Port Washington, confirmed the hot bass action. His trips have seen several stripers in the 25- to 30-pound class caught each day in 25 feet of water between Hempstead and Manhasset harbors.

Aside from the over-writing (why "hammer" bass? "Catch" or "hook" are perfectly good words), that sounds pretty good to me.

Of course both the New York and Connecticut Health Departments have permanent health advisories warning women of childbearing years, and children, to eat no striped bass -- none -- because of PCBs.

Most of the PCB problem, of course, was caused by General Electric, which dumped enormous amounts of the compound into the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers.

Which brings me to news about a forum about the future of Long Island Sound, being held on Sunday at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk. One of the panelists will be General Electric environmental counsel Mark Stoler (click here).

I wonder if any of the Maritime Aquarium people who invited him will have the guts to remind him that 30-plus years after his company stopped dumping PCBs into our rivers, our kids still are advised not to eat fresh fish from Long Island Sound.

Money that GE Paid Out After Dumping PCBs into the Housatonic Will Be Used for Habitat Restoration Near Long Island Sound

Here are some habitat restoration proposals near Long Island Sound that are under consideration for funding in Connecticut:

— $963,000 sought by the state Department of Environmental Protection to control non-native invasive plant species, such as phragmites, in Stratford and Milford;

— $785,000 requested by the Town of Stratford for wetlands restoration, cleanup and construction of a greenway at the Hunter-Havens property;

— and, $20,000 requested by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for restoration of piping plover and tern habitats at the Stuart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge at Milford Point.

The money would come from a fund established eight years ago as a result of General Electric's decision to ruin the Housatonic River by dumping PCBs into it in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. GE, the company that brings good things to life, also ruined the Hudson, and by ruined I mean it killed a centuries-old commercial fishing industry.