GE agrees to pay $7.9M
Brendan J. Lyons
General Electric Co. will pay $7.95 million to settle part of a federal lawsuit filed in 2009 by several Saratoga County municipal agencies that shut down or moved their water supplies when the company began dredging PCBs from the Hudson River that year.
The settlement ends an intensive legal battle that's unfolded in U.S. District Court in Albany between GE and the towns and villages of Stillwater and Waterford, and the Water Commissioners of the town of Waterford. Two other plaintiffs — the Saratoga County Water Authority and the town of Halfmoon -— did not join the settlement and are moving forward in their litigation with GE.
A federal complaint filed by the municipalities five years ago claimed GE should help pay the costs for alternate water supplies that the towns and villages pursued when the company's federally mandated $1 billion dredging project began. The Saratoga County Water Authority, meanwhile, alleged it spent more than $27 million to build its water-supply intake on the Hudson River in Moreau to be upstream from the company's PCB pollution.
GE's federally mandated clean-up of the upper Hudson River, which is the nation's largest superfund site, has caused occasional spikes in PCB levels that prompted the towns of Waterford and Halfmoon to shut down their water treatment plants, which both pull water from the Hudson River. Those communities have since purchased water from the city of Troy's Tomhannock Reservoir while the dredging continues at least through 2015.
http://m.timesunion.com/local/article/GE-agrees-to-pay-7-9M-5596998.php
