Photo: Joe Lombardo Fort Edward, N.Y. — Nearly 200 miles of the Hudson River is a toxic waste site. Once, the fish in the river provided food for people who lived along its banks, but today the fish that still remain in the river are toxic. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency has designated this area the largest Superfund site in the country. Superfund is the federal government’s program to clean up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. (epa.gov) The poisoning of the Hudson River was done by the General Electric Co., which dumped more than 1 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) into the river from its two capacitor plants in the towns of Hudson Falls and Fort Edward, north of Albany, N.Y. PCBs were determined to be toxic and banned by the EPA in 1977. Today, GE is dumping something else from these plants: its workers. The Hudson Falls plant is now closed, and GE has announced that it will close the Fort Edward plant and move its operations to Clearwater, Fla., a so-called “right to work” state where workers will be paid Walmart-like wages of $8 to $13 per hour in a nonunion plant. Workers at the Fort Edward . . .
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