Between 1947 and 1977, General Electric dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River. The source of the PCB discharges was two GE capacitor manufacturing plants located in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, New York, about 50 miles north of Albany. GE’s PCBs are now found in sediment, water and wildlife throughout the Hudson River ecosystem as far south as the New York Harbor. They are also found in people.

Large quantities of PCBs remain concentrated in river sediment in the Upper Hudson between Fort Edward and the Federal Dam in Troy. Forty of these so-called hot spots have been identified, half of which are located in a six-mile stretch called the Thompson Island Pool, directly downstream from the two GE plants. The removal of the Fort Edward Dam in 1973 caused large amounts of contaminated sediments to wash down-river.

When the public was first informed of the PCB contamination of the Hudson in the mid-1970s, GE threatened to relocate its facilities — and the jobs and tax base it provided — outside of the state if it was held responsible for the contamination. GE went as far as issuing notices to its workers at Fort Edward and Hudson Falls that PCBs were a phony controversy cooked up by environmentalists to destroy their jobs.

The harmful effects of PCBs are well documented. Among other things:

• PCBs cause cancer in laboratory animals, and are classified by the EPA as probable human carcinogens.
  
• PCBs cause liver, kidney and nervous system disorders, as well as developmental and reproductive abnormalities.
  
• PCBs increase in concentration as much as a thousand-fold as they move up the food chain. This bioaccumulation is of special concern in areas where wildlife and humans consume PCB-contaminated fish.
  
• The United States banned PCBs in 1977 due to their harmful health effects.