FORT EDWARD — Even though it may take a decade longer than expected for the Hudson River to recover from toxic PCBs, there is no need to make changes to the dredging project, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.

Several members of the Citizens Advisory Group, residents watching the cleanup, challenged EPA at a meeting at Hudson Falls Central School District offices.

Their focus was a five-year review of the cleanup done by EPA, which found no need to change the plan even though there were more PCBs than had been initially expected after dredging started around Fort Edward. As a result, the goal of having fish again be safe to eat might take 10 more years than had been projected.

The cleanup plan was crafted between EPA and General Electric Co. in 2002.

Cleanup started last month on a five-mile section of river in Saratoga County south of the Thompson Island Dam to Fort Miller. The work is being done under a standard that allows three times as many PCBs to remain, compared to the standard used at Fort Edward in the first year of the project.

That difference means about 136 acres of PCBs would not have to be dredged.

The 2002 cleanup plan, which would dredge about 500 acres in 40 miles of river from Fort Edward to Troy, envisioned that fish would be completely safe to eat within three decades after the cleanup. Now, it apparently will take another decade for PCB levels to fall enough for consumption.

GE facilities in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls legally dumped the PCBs in the river for decades until the late 1970s.

"The potential delay to achieve remedial goals is not deemed a sufficient reason to modify the remedial (2002) design," EPA Project Manager Dave King said. He said the cleanup is "protective of human health and the environment," which is its legal obligation.

Environmentalists renewed objections against a looser cleanup standard downriver from Fort Edward. "The only safe approach is to apply the same cleanup criteria for the current section of the river that were used (at Fort Edward)," said David Adams, a member of the citizens group representing the Saratoga County Environmental Management Council.

Althea Mullarey from the environmental organization Scenic Hudson said the additional decade it will take for fish consumption to become safe is linked to the decision not to clean up the river to the same level that was first used.

"That standard was off then, and it is ever more off now," she said.

"When the EPA says that no new information has come to light (since the 2002 cleanup agreement), I have to question that," said Saratoga County representative Julie Stokes of the county Chamber of Commerce. She said the EPA's position "doesn't make any sense."

Last summer, both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also recommended that EPA require dredging of the disputed 136 acres.

bnearing@timesunion.com