Philipstown News

Cadmium Contamination Muddies Plans for Commercial Boat Mooring

By , News Editor |

By Liz Schevtchuk Armstrong
Toxic pollution apparently lingers under the Cold Spring dock, adding another dimension to an ongoing village debate about increasing use of the dock for commercial boating. A regional U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official confirmed Wednesday evening (Feb. 22) that despite a massive, 1993-95 Superfund operation to clean-up the mess created by the Marathon Battery Co. plant, the dock  continues to harbor cadmium, at least in small quantities. “There is a limited amount of contaminated sediment under the dock between boulders” that complicated clean-up efforts nearly 20 years ago, Pamela Tames, a professional engineer with the N.Y. Remediation Branch of the EPA, wrote in an e-mail responding to queries from Philipstown.info.  Project manager for the remediation, Tames explained that during the design phase of the effort, the EPA “determined that there are large boulders and a large discharge pipe beneath the dock, making that area inaccessible for dredge equipment” used to extricate the cadmium elsewhere.  “Therefore we stabilized the deteriorated dock so it wouldn’t collapse during the dredging operation and we dredged around the dock and [river] down to Downey’s pier.”
       During a Tuesday night (Feb.