A man fishing for striped bass from the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway in Liberty State Park this week shrugged aside any potential health risks from pollution.

“I eat the fish whenever I catch it,” he said.

But the Hudson Riverkeeper and NY/NJ Baykeeper, Greg Remaud, and at least 17 members of Congress beg to differ. They’re urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to resume a cleanup of PCBs that was abandoned in 2019.

“We also call on the EPA to recognize that the dredging remedy has not been as effective as originally promised to our constituents and start the process of addressing new remedial actions to protect the environment and our vulnerable populations along the Hudson River who, without further actions by the EPA, will continue to be exposed to harmful levels of PCB toxins,” advised  Remaud and Congressional members.

Four members of the N.J. Congressional delegation, Bob Menendez of the 8th District, Bill Pascrell (9th District), Josh Gottheimer (5th District) and Mikie Sherrill (11th District) joined 13 of their New York in urging EPA to continue remediating pollution in the Hudson – a Superfund site.

Technically, they are asking EPA, as part of its 5-year review of Superfunds, to overturn the agency’s decision in 2019 to issue a “certificate of completion” of remediation efforts undertaken by General Electric, which – by the Baykeeper’s calculations – reportedly dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the river between 1947 and 1977.

Acting under a 2006 federal consent decree, GE spent $1.7 billion to dredge more than 300,000 pounds of PCBs from the bottom of the river, 40 miles north of Albany, that, GE estimated, represented about 70% of the most seriously compromised section of the river.

Nonetheless, the Baykeeper and members of Congress insist that, “Evidence shows that far more PCBs remain in the river’s sediment post-dredging than was originally estimated (and are detectable) at unacceptably high levels … in the living issue of wildlife (such as) birds and fish … known to contribute to increased risks of cancer, diabetes, liver toxicity, skin ailments and neurological and respiratory issues.”

Moreover, they say, “EPA’s reliance on fish consumption advisories to protect people from the risks of eating contaminated fish is not an adequate nor a just intervention for addressing human health risks.”

In federal technical parlance, Congressional representatives, Baykeeper and various environmentalists are asking the EPA to issue a “not protective determination” for the Hudson River Supersite project to trigger new, more effective cleanup strategies.

Ron Leir has been a journalist since 1972. That includes a 37-year stint as a reporter, copy reader and assistant editor with The Jersey Journal, followed by a decade as a reporter with The Observer in...