Work resumes on Superfund clean-up sites | News

COLONIE - It's not as big and far less expensive than 40 miles of Hudson River dredging that GE fought so aggressively.

We're talking about the Mercury Refining superfund site off Railroad Avenue on the Colonie-Guilderland border.

"20 thousand people live within one and a half miles of this site," said U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Regional Director Judith Enck at a Tuesday news conference. 

For 42 years ending in 1998, the Mercury Refining Company used an industrial oven to recover mercury.

Unfortunately, their process released the extremely toxic metal into the the soil and creek around the plant.

"This site was listed as a Superfund site in 1983," said Enck. "About 9.3 million dollars has been spent remediating the site. 8 million of that coming from various polluters."

Earlier, environmental officials and Congressman Paul Tonko (D - Amsterdam)visited the site of a former junkyard and auto repair shops in center Troy along the Hudson.
 

This area is being cleaned up through an agreement with the responsible party, National Grid.
         

It will be turned into a boat launch.

Officials also noted this is the southern end of the 40 mile Hudson River PCB clean-up now in its third year in the Fort Edward area.