Hudson River Clean Up Project

More than 40 TGS environmental level-cut clamshell buckets were sent to New York for the Hudson River Clean Up Project. This is a job that The Grab Specialist B.V. proudly participated in.

Before explaining how it was done, we first need to know why the Hudson river is being cleaned up.

From 1947 to 1977, 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) were dumped into the Hudson River by General Electric and other companies. It has been demonstrated that these chemicals cause various bad health effects, for example : effects on the nervous system, immune system, reproductive system, etc. They are very harmful to human and animals. That is one of the reasons why swimming in the Hudson river is a very bad idea.

The Hudson river Clean Up Project started in 2009. The plan was to remove as much of the PCB infected sediment as possible from the river ground by dredging it.

For this job the environmental level cut buckets from The Grab Specialist were chosen. The advantages of this type of grabs are that they close on a fixed horizontal plane while at the same time creating low turbulence and maintaining high production.

The rest of the plan was to cover the remaining PCB infected sediment with some fresh one. Actions were also taken to revive the ecosystem.

The water quality has improved a lot since 1972 and has remained stable in recent years. The river is doing much better than before but it is still not safe to take a dip in or eat the fish caught there.

For more information about how the project came to life, here is a video from NRDCflix which goes a lot more in detail about what happened and you can also see our grabs in action (at 4:40 ; 5:00 ; 5:22 ; 6:10 ; 6:32 ; 6:50 ; 7:32).

Here is a report made in 2020 that goes a lot more in detail about the Hudson river's current state: