GE’s response to the EPA’s February 2002 directive to clean up its Hudson River PCB mess presented itself as a concession but was instead a continuing effort to evade responsibility. Riverkeeper and its alliance of environmental groups are determined to continue to apply pressure on GE until the company commits itself to financing and expeditiously executing on the full EPA cleanup plan.
 
GE’s response fails to meet the threshold requirements of what the EPA can accept. Significantly, it fails the very first prong of the EPA’s Record of Decision (ROD), requiring GE to offer:
 
“An unambiguous statement of (GE’s) willingness to conduct or finance the Remedial Design/Remedial Action consistent with the ROD.”

GE’s response contains a commitment only to conduct the design of the cleanup, estimated at approximately $30 million, but contains no such assurance to conduct or pay for the estimated $460 million cleanup itself. GE instead specifically leaves this cleanup and the vast majority of costs to future negotiation, and makes those negotiations contingent on conditions GE alone determines.
 
Additionally, GE refuses payment of its outstanding $37 million debt to the government. It instead defers payment of what it owes until the EPA accepts its new terms.
 
Because it fails to meet the first and most significant threshold requirement, GE’s response does not constitute a good faith offer. In fact it is a counteroffer with new and unusual terms, and a concrete demonstration of this polluter’s ongoing effort to delay and derail the cleanup that the Hudson River and its residents have waited decades to begin.