General Electric will set aside a further $500m to pay for the clean-up of toxic chemicals from the bottom of the Hudson River as part of efforts to end one of the longest-running environmental battles in the US.
GE has finally agreed to US Environmental Protection Agency demands to complete an extensive dredging programme to restore the New York river.
A 200-mile stretch of waterway was contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls from GE’s capacitor manufacturing plants, which began using the toxins in the 1940s. The chemicals were banned in 1977 after being linked to cancer, and the EPA closed the river to fishing. GE battled with regulators for decades over the scale and shape of the clean-up.