St. Regis Mohawks used to fish and swim in this cove of the St. Lawrence River. Today, it's contaminated with PCBs from General Motors' landfill, which rises in the background. Photo by David Sommerstein.
The federal government has identified almost 50 toxic landfills that continue to contaminate the Great Lakes and their major tributaries. Thousands more may pollute smaller creeks and rivers upstream. Almost all of them have affected the way people live. In northern New York, General Motors and a native tribe have spent two decades fighting over how to clean up one of those sites. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports… the lack of progress is caused by differing approaches to a permanent solution:
Transcript
The federal government has identified almost 50 toxic landfills that continue to contaminate the Great Lakes and their major tributaries. Thousands more may pollute smaller creeks and rivers upstream. Almost all of them have affected the way people live. In northern New York, General Motors and a native tribe have spent two decades fighting over how to clean up one of those sites. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein reports… the lack of progress is caused by differing approaches to a permanent solution:
Dana Lee Thompson and her sister, Marilyn, walk along the St. Lawrence River. They teeter as they step over driftwood and tufts of grass. This part of the shoreline belongs to the St. Regis Mohawk tribe.
When the sisters were kids, they used to splash and play in the river. Their father landed walleye and bass for dinner. And when the sisters had children of their own, this is where they taught them to swim…
“…it’s all flat rocks and stuff like that…”
“…And just down there, there used to be a tiny little falls and it was all sand and we used to swim.”
Thompson brushes her long black hair out of her eyes. The smile fades from her face…
“Never knew that what we were swimming in was one of the most toxic things, y’know, toxic pools.”
Just on the other side of a chain link fence that marks the end of tribal land, a hill rises above their heads. Its grass is cut short like the tenth green on a golf course.
It’s General Motors’ old landfill. Drums of used factory oil are buried just under the manicured lawn. The oil contains PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs were used as a coolant in many factories until scientists found they cause cancer.
The federal government banned PCBs in 1977. A couple years later, workers covered the landfill with a temporary cap. But the PCBs had already seeped into the water where the sisters’ kids were swimming…
“I get emotionally disturbed. Mental anguish. Anger. My children have a lot of health problems, which gets me upset.”
The sisters aren’t alone. Tribal members who have grown up near the dump have high rates of thyroid disease, diabetes, and respiratory disorders – all suspected to be linked to PCBs. The Thompsons – and the tribal government – want General Motors to dig up the chemicals. And they want GM to truck them away…
“We’re just looking out over the cove. These are some homes and businesses of the Mohawks and to our right is the industrial landfill.”
Jim Hartnett stands on the GM side of the chain link fence. He’s managing the clean up for the company. He says the Environmental Protection Agency ordered GM to do three things: put a permanent cap on the landfill, monitor it for PCBs indefinitely, and dredge the PCBs from the river.
Hartnett says GM has wanted to move ahead with that plan for a decade. He says that would make the water clean again…
“My hope is that as we complete this clean-up, that people will come and use the cove and that it will be accessible and that people will be comfortable using it.”
David: “Do you think it’s realistic that within our lifetimes that the cove could be used for swimming?”
“I’m hoping that in the next two years we can have it ready to go. I’m not talking within our lifetime, I’m talking about as soon as we get access to that cove, we want to go in and remedy it.”
But the tribe won’t give them access. The St. Regis Mohawks say cleaning the cove isn’t the right answer. Ken Jock, the tribe’s environment director, has technical concerns with the plan.
But in the end, Jock says, the disagreement is more than technical. The tribe sees environmental cleanups differently. The EPA plans 30 to 50 years ahead. But the Mohawk tradition is to plan seven generations ahead…
“And so when you make a decision to clean up or to cover up at a site, you have to think is this area, are the PCBs going to be contained for the next 250 years. We have to think that way because this is the only land that we have left.”
The EPA wants everyone to stand behind the same solution. Anne Kelly is the EPA project manager of the site. She has commissioned more technical studies to try to prove the containment plan won’t poison the river in the future. She’s reassured the tribe the dump will be monitored in perpetuity.
“But that’s where we get into a sort of difficulty between our interpretation of time and the tribes. They don’t trust that we’re always going to be here, you know, that the EPA as it stands will not be what it is now. But they know they’re going to be there. So we say, ‘we’re going to monitor that forever’. They say, ‘you may not be here forever. Where are our guarantees?’ ”
Meanwhile, traces of PCBs are still leeching into the river. But the St. Regis Mohawks’ Ken Jock says he’ll wait on a clean up if it will ensure clean water and healthy fish for his grandchildren’s grandchildren.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.