FORT EDWARD
Hudson River is set for dredging in spring
Updated: 06/29/08 6:41 AM
FORT EDWARD (AP) — Hudson River dredging looks ready to launch, finally.
Workers hired by General Electric Co. are finishing a canal- side wharf for barges and a hangar-sized building to squeeze dry polluted river mud. A rail yard is being built with nearly seven miles of track for shipping out the waste.
After three decades of plans, lawsuits, negotiations, delays and demonstrations, a rural site a few miles from the upper Hudson is being prepared to treat tons of PCB-contaminated river mud beginning next spring — “Phase 1” of a six-year operation that will ultimately scrape away 490 acres of river bottom.
GE plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls dumped wastewater containing more than a million pounds of PCBs into the river before they were banned in 1977.
The gooey compounds once used as coolants in electrical equipment are a suspected carcinogen and the narrow run of the upper Hudson is considered so polluted that the fish are deemed unsafe to eat.
