In June, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that 23,000 cubic yards of PCB laden material would be removed from the General Motors (GM) Superfund site for disposal at a licensed facility in Utah. The total includes 13,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediments dredged from the St. Lawrence River and stored on the site since 1995, and 10,000 cubic yards of contaminated sludge from the active wastewater treatment plant on the GM property.

So far this summer, the remediation activity at GM has been going ahead as planned. Sharlee Thomas, environmental technician for the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe Environment Division, who has been monitoring the cleanup for the Tribe said, "With more than 75% of the remediation complete, we are pleased so far with the clean-up. There have been no major problems. We are hopeful that the rest of the clean up process will go as smoothly." To this point, all of the dredged river sediment from the St. Lawrence river has been shipped off site. The focus now will be to remove the contaminated sludge from the wastewater treatment plant. This phase of the remediation is planned for completion by mid-September.

"The removal of the contaminated sediment from GM property is a major step in the right direction. Once this stage of the remediation is complete, we can turn our attention to the clean up of the Raquette River and the industrial landfill at GM. Through continued cooperative efforts of the Tribe, GM, EPA, and New York State, we are confident that the next phase of remediation at this site will occur in the near future," said Ken Jock, SRMT Environment Division Director. This fall General Motors will begin sampling the Raquette River and the industrial landfill to determine the extent of the contamination at those locations and to identify all of the chemicals that are present.