New York’s Hudson River is getting cleaned up, finally. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared the Hudson River a Superfund site, meaning it’s a filthy polluted mess in need of a good scrubbing.

Good news, starting last Friday a computer-guided dredging system began scooping out piles of disgusting mud, old tires, broken bottles, dead mafia henchmen and whatever else is under there.

Twelve dredging machines will work round the clock, six days a week, hunting for sediment contaminated with PCBs. Then the gunk will be hauled to a hazardous waste landfill in Texas. PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyl are harmful to both humans and animals.

Prior to 1977, before they were banned, an estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCBs flowed into the Hudson. New York officials are calling the cleanup the healing of the Hudson, but Hudson River pollution isn’t all bad.

Here’s my hero. The late, great George Carlin:

When I was a little boy in New York City in the nineteen-forties, we swam in the Hudson River, and it was filled with raw sewage! We swam in raw sewage, you know, to cool off!

And at that time the big fear was polio. Thousands of kids died from polio every year. But you know something? In my neighborhood no one ever got polio. No one, ever!

You know why? Cause we swam in raw sewage! It strengthened our immune system. The polio never had a prayer. We were tempered in raw sh**!

Via The New York Times.