GE Prepares To Sample Hudson River Soil

Date: July 25, 2002

Source: News Room

General Electric Co. will begin sampling PCB-laden soil in the Hudson River as early as next month under an agreement the company reached recently with federal environmental officials. But GE has only committed to reimbursing $5 million of the $37 million in past costs the Environmental Protection Agency incurred creating the dredging blueprint. And the EPA has yet to cement a deal with the company on the larger questions of the project's design and the actual cleanup. The start of the $15 million sampling project in late August or early September sets in motion one of the largest dredging operations in the nation, decades in the making. For years, GE has fought against having to clean up PCBs it dumped onto the Hudson River from its plants north of Albany until the substance was banned in 1977. GE still has a lawsuit pending challenging the constitutionality of the Superfund law.

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