for 315 miles from the Adirondack Mountains to the Battery in Manhattan, reaching its

deepest point of 216 feet in the Highlands near Constitution Island and West Point and

reaches its widest point of 3 miles across at Havestraw. This river is one of the most

beautiful and scenic of the Tri-State area. Unfortunately, it happens to be New York’s

most polluted river. The river has been influenced upon since the early 1600’s, when

Englishman Henry Hudson commanded the Dutch ship Half Moon on an exploration of

the river, certain that he had discovered a trade route to China. It soon dawned that this

was no Atlantic-to-Pacific passage but an Edenlike place of awesome potential-a river

valley teeming with prospect and spirit that was worth fighting for. In the centuries that

followed, the fight for the river and its commerce never stopped, and still continues to the

present. Then during the Industrial Revolution, with the advent of hulking manufacturing

plants on the riverbanks, everything changed. The river became a sewer, cut off from the

people around it by the electrification of the railroads. The 1825 completion of the Erie

Some topics in this essay:
Hudson River, Specifically PCBs, Record Decision, Hudson Women, Require GE, Half Moon, NYS DEC, Pure PCBs, Industrial Revolution, Hudson Valley, hudson river, food chain, health advisories, pcbs hudson, hudson falls, contaminated sediments, eaten fish eaten, hudson valley, sediments river, york city, fort edward, women childbearing age, hudson river fish, pcbs hudson river,