There’s a big fight underway over the future of the Hudson River. Over the last decade, the federal government forced General Electric to spend hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up tons of toxic PCBs, oily pollution the company dumped in the river. It was seen as a model program, but a growing number of critics say it didn’t work.

It was a bitter cold day in Hudson Falls New York as I walked by the icy riverbank. This is a stretch of water the state of New York says is still dangerously polluted.

"The levels of contamination in both fish and sediment have remained troublingly high," said Basil Seggos heads New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, in a phone interview.

His office released a big new study last month, concluding that levels of toxic PCBs haven’t declined much, despite six years of dredging and other restoration work.

"That doesn’t mean the original dredging was not worth it, but then you have to assess whether or not it worked and whether more is needed."

A big project leaves big questions

The Environmental Protection Agency is doing its own research, trying to decide whether that work was good enough that they can call the project complete.

But Manna Jo Green, an environmental activist, says the report by scientists working for New York state shows that a clean bill of health for the Hudson would be premature.

"The results are disappointing, and a more robust clean-up is needed. The EPA must not issue a certificate of completion to General Electric because that would let them off the hook."

Some locals say, enough

"They should have left it alone from the get-go," said Jay Harrington who lives right next to the river. The backyard where his dogs play is bordered by the contaminated riverbank. Asked if he worries about possible health risks, he shrugged and said, "Too late now."

You hear this over and over here, a kind of resignation. GE spread PCBs all over this valley before people realized the industrial chemical causes deformities in fish and other wildlife and carries a risk of cancer for humans. In a coffee shop nearby Art and William Wells were eating lunch.

"How you going to get it all out of the water, I just don’t see how," Art Wells said.

"I’m thinking with him, waste of time," William Wells added.

GE says enough work has been done for now

GE spokesman Mark Behan says the clean-up did more good than critics are willing to admit, and he accuses New York state of moving the goalposts, setting new, stricter standards to measure the clean-up's success.

"Based on the new standard it's applying, New York now says they don’t meet the threshold. But they did meet the EPA threshold," Behan argued.

Basil Seggos, New York’s Conservation commissioner, says that’s just not true: "Our research over the last two years followed the exact same protocols as the EPA mandated protocols that GE followed. So to suggest otherwise is frankly absurd."

EPA officials, who weren’t available to talk because of the partial government shutdown, will play referee here, deciding what additional work if any has to be done.

Their final answer is expected this year and whichever way they rule, it'll likely be tested by a lawsuit.

This debate and the science emerging from the Hudson clean-up are being watched closely. Around the country, officials are preparing other big dredging projects on rivers contaminated with PCBs.

That includes a major project on the Grasse and St. Lawrence Rivers here in the North Country.