Can Rivers Have Rights, Too?

Reader Contribution by Darlene May Lee and Earth Law Center
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My old apartment enjoyed a great view of the Hudson River, and when I walked along the river, I’d often see kayakers splashing around. I knew the river used to be polluted, but I didn’t realize that riverside factories dumped garbage and industrial waste into the Hudson for decades. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared a 200-mile stretch of the river as a Superfund site in 1983, one of the largest hazardous waste sites in the US. Thanks to dredging and removal of contaminated soil (funded by General Electric (GE) to the tune of $460 million), the Hudson River has recovered so much that a humpback whale was spotted in 2016 – the first whale to be seen in the Hudson River for 100 years.

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