TOP companies legally dump billions of tons of poisonous chemicals into rivers supplying drinking water, a report revealed yesterday.

The protests followed a Greenpeace report on the way '50 Filthy Firms' including ICI, BP and Shell legally dump huge amounts of waste.

Eventually, Maryport Council had to apply for a special nuclear waste disposal licence from the Department of the Environment so that it could legally dump the silt back in the sea again.

Sludge is also shampoo, and Drano, and paint from brushes washed in sinks, and antifreeze poured down gutters, and heavy metals and industrial waste dumped both legally and illegally.

Federal officials told investigators that they were more worried about the millions of gallons of untreated "gray water" dumped legally by cruise ships each year.

The General Electric Company, which legally dumped the chemicals in the river from its factories and would be saddled with all cleanup costs under the E.P.A. plan, has vowed to fight back with every resource at its command.

The federal plan, which is to be formally announced today in New York, is a major defeat for G.E., which owned the factories north of Albany that legally dumped the chemicals in the river over a 30-year period.

But I told her they now have six years before they can legally dump it, by which time they will thank me for having kept them from letting it go now.

Cruise ships generate up to 25,000 gallons of sewage per day and can legally dump raw sewage in the ocean only 3 miles from shore.

The groups, which expect 3,000 participants, want General Electric to pay $500 million or more to dredge the Hudson of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCB's, which G.E. legally dumped for decades.