With help from EPA and NRDC Phase 1 of the long-delayed clean-up of those PCBs has been completed, The Hudson River Clean-up project will take six years, cost over $750 million dollars, and extend down to the southern tip of Manhattan. Phase 1, the first year of dredging, was designed to address approximately 10 percent of the material to be dredged over the six-year project timeframe. At the end of Phase 1, an estimated 293,000 cy of PCB-contaminated sediment had been removed from the river. Phase 2 will remove the remaining targeted contaminants and operate for several years. Between 1947 and 1977, CapacitorManufacturing Plants dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River. The source of the PCB discharges was two capacitor manufacturing plants located in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, New York, about 50 miles north of Albany. 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. Phase 2 will start full production only after an evaluation of Phase 1 is made and reviewed by the public and an independent panel of experts. Phase 2 is expected to begin in 2011 and will address the remaining contamination over five years.
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