Hudson River

NEW YORK - For 25 years, environmental groups and New York officials have concentrated on the problems posed by toxic PCBs in the Hudson River, but now they are starting to focus on land in the upper Hudson Valley. More than six times as many PCBs were dumped on land as in the river, according to two separate investigations conducted by environmental groups and based on state records. Although the chemicals are not as dangerous on land as they are in the river, where they become concentrated in fish and river sediment, they are leaking into ground water in a number of places, and may be leaking into the Hudson in a few, according to state officials.

Getting there Although trains travel to the region (Amtrak to New York, then Metro North to Peekskill), the best way to see the expansive Hudson Valley region is via car. From Baltimore, West Point is about 270 miles. The five-hour drive up Interstate 95, then the New Jersey Turnpike to the Garden State Parkway North finally becomes picturesque once you enter the Palisades Parkway, eventually landing you in the Hudson Valley, where you'll follow a series of smallish roads overlooking the Hudson River to the Academy.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Five members of Congress have criticized the Environmental Protection Agency for again delaying a decision on whether to dredge the Hudson River to remove PCBs.In a letter sent to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey, a Hudson Valley Democrat, voiced "serious disappointment" in the agency's announcement this year to push back its decision on dredging."At a time when Congress is on the brink of reauthorizing Superfund, we are concerned that the Hudson could become a leading example of the program's inability to resolve difficult and unusual sites," the letter said.

Maryland Art Place chairwoman and fundraiser Suzi Cordish doesn't like to sit still for very long. Along with her husband, developer David Cordish, she travels to exotic settings around the world, wherever work and interests take the couple. They frequent world-class art fairs, international tennis tournaments and high-powered global conferences. But when it comes to divulging her favorite getaway, Cordish points to an American region that is long revered for its inspiring historical significance and well-preserved natural beauty: the Hudson Valley and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

At 102 years and counting, Dick's Castle may be the longest-running construction project ever. Vast, odd, sometimes even beautiful, the vaguely Moorish poured-concrete folly sits in Garrison, N.Y., like an old pasha on a hill overlooking that jog of the Hudson River between West Point to the west and the Shawangunk Mountains to the north. Thus sited, Dick's Castle claims as its home what is perhaps Garrison's most stunning vantage point - which may explain why the place has been wrestled with by so many for so long.

NEW YORK -- For the first time in two decades, New York state environmental scientists have found that chemical contamination in striped bass from the lower reaches of the Hudson River has dropped to levels deemed safe to eat by the federal government.In a recent study, staff scientists with the Environmental Conservation Department concluded that the drop was large enough for state officials to consider ending a 23-year-old ban on commercial netting of the fish, a state law that has nearly eliminated a centuries-old traditional springtime harvest of stripers and shad along the river banks.

The dredging of the Hudson River for PCBs will be starting a year later than expected, in 2006 instead of 2005, but the striped bass season in the river opened this spring, right on time. There is no direct connection between the two events. The Environmental Protection Agency needs more time to plan the dredging. And the fishing for stripers has been going on for years with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, in the river. In fact, there are more stripers in the river now than there have been in decades.

WATERFORD, N.Y. -- Here where the Hudson River meets the New York State Barge Canal, the big pleasure boats were lined up for days in May, waiting for the canal to open for the season. But the boaters didn't seem to mind. Al Sprung of Ontario, skipper of the Suvorov, said most harbors charged more for fewer amenities. Here in Waterford, which advertises "First two nights free, after that $10," he had film developed and attended a $5 pancake breakfast with the money he had saved on docking.

For most of this century, the Hudson has been a sorry environmental wreck.Decades of binging on toxic chemicals gradually took its toll, and although the river's grandeur could not be denied, most people, looking at the Hudson, could only shake their heads in sorrow.The mighty river, once home to porpoises and even reportedly a whale, had entered the final stages of decline, fit habitat only for a few funky fish.Then, the impossible happened. In an awesome display of willpower, the Hudson took the pledge.

BALMVILLE, N.Y. - Heidi Benson's house is also her hometown.The 19th-century carriage house near Newburgh, where Ms. Benson, a senior editor at Family Life magazine, lives with her husband, Matthew Benson, a photographer, is part of a one-acre village of carpenter Gothic outbuildings. They were built as a gentleman's farm for an Italianate Hudson River mansion next door. In addition to the carriage house, there is a farm manager's house, a barn, a milking parlor, a stable and an icehouse, with a village green between.

It didn't quite measure up to making an emergency landing in the middle of the Hudson River, but as Harvey White stood beside the 120-foot chunk of airplane on a ramp off Interstate 95 near Perryville on Monday, he felt a sense of conquest. White, a resident of Rising Sun, and his wife, Ruth, had spent an hour and a half in their SUV trying to track down a unique procession: a caravan of 35 vehicles accompanying the fuselage of the US Airways plane that splash-landed in January 2009.

US Airways Flight 1549 out of New York's LaGuardia Airport had been in the air for just 90 seconds when a collision with a flock of birds forced Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger to make a dramatic landing in the Hudson River. Corporate attorney Jim Hanks, 65, a partner in the Baltimore office of Venable LLP, prefers to sit at the front of the plane when he flies. But for the Airbus A320 flight to Charlotte, N.C., the Federal Hill resident found himself in an aisle seat three rows from the back.

I live in Pikesville, and my family recently visited Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. The Fort, which is located at the southern tip of Lake Champlain and northern tip of Lake George and dates back to Revolutionary times, played a pivotal role when the French and British were fighting for strategic control of waterways to the north - the St. Lawrence River - and to the south - the Hudson River. We visited late in the day as a fife and drum corps in period costume played taps and lowered the flags that fly over the Fort.

It was always a bit of a drive through the rolling hills of Carroll County to Rudys' 2900 in Finksburg, but once you arrived and the maitre d' warmly welcomed you at the door, you knew instantly it was well worth the effort. And for those who appreciated its classic cuisine with an emphasis on game and seafood dishes as well as luscious and delicately prepared sauces, the news of its closing in 2005 was indeed a blow. It was the third such classic gastronomic institution - right behind Jeannier's and Maison Marconi - to close that year.

Nov. 13 1927 The Holland Tunnel opened to the public, providing access between lower Manhattan and New Jersey beneath the Hudson River.

FDR By Jean Edward Smith Random House / 858 pages / $35 Franklin Delano Roosevelt's beloved mother died in 1941. Her casket was carried to the grave by her most loyal servants, including a butler and chauffeur. The Secret Service was there, too, of course, but it hung far back from the ceremony. "I don't think we belong in there," said the president's personal bodyguard, Mike Reilly, "even if Congress says we do." He was referring to the intimacy of the moment. But you can also hear, in his nervousness, overtones of class.

RENSSELAER, N.Y. -- The sun dances like diamonds as one looks from the east side of the Hudson River. The reflections are so brilliant that on a sunny day sunglasses are a must, especially for the drive beginning on Route 9J out of Rensselaer to points south in Columbia and Dutchess counties.One of the grander, private mansions along the way is Callendar House in Clermont, between Tivoli and Barrytown, which was built on a bluff overlooking the river in 1794 by Henry Livingston. The house has a Federal-style core, with one-story wings added in 1828.

BAYONNE, N.J. -- A half-century after the region's last streetcar disappeared to make way for more cars and buses, New Jersey officials are set to open the first leg of a $1.1 billion trolley system along the Hudson River. It will carry 25,000 riders a day, and the entire project, when completed in 2010, is expected to carry more than 100,000 people through the most densely populated region in New Jersey. The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, which was expected to carry its first fare-paying passenger Saturday, is the metropolitan region's most ambitious public transportation project since the 1960s, the largest public works program in New Jersey history and an intriguing look at the prospects for a transit system long deemed a part of the past.

Harvey Weinstein, 82 Tuxedo company executive Harvey Weinstein, a former tuxedo company executive who was buried alive for 12 days after being kidnapped in 1993, died May 13 in Manhattan after a lengthy illness. He was 82. Known as the "tuxedo king," Weinstein was CEO of Lord West, a company that manufactured formal wear. Weinstein retired in 1999. The abduction occurred Aug. 4, 1993. Fermin Rodriguez, a collar maker at Weinstein's company, and two accomplices, kidnapped Weinstein and buried him in a pit near the Hudson River.

GEOGRAPHY QUIZ-- The Erie Canal was constructed in the early 1800s to connect the Great Lakes with what river? (Answer below) QUIZ ANSWER (FROM ABOVE) Hudson River. SOURCE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BEE