Schuylerville

It will be at least several years before officials seriously consider whether people can safely eat fish from the Hudson River, but there's been progress in reducing the level of PCBs, Environmental Protection Agency scientists said Thursday.

Despite that, officials realize that people are to some extent, consuming what they catch in the river despite health concerns. "All over the country, this is a problem,'' said Marc Greenberg, a deputy branch chief for the EPA.

He and others spoke to members of a Community Advisory Group comprising people from the upper and lower Hudson River valleys who are watching the long-term cleanup of PCBs which General Electric Co. dumped into the river for years before the practice was banned.

Thursday's meeting comes almost a year after the EPA's massive dredging of the river for PCBs between Fort Edward and Troy was completed.

The level of PCBs found in the sampled fish is down to the "double digits" of parts per million, well below that of the pre-dredging 1990s, Greenberg and others said, but there have been some glitches and spikes along the way. A ban on eating fish does have some exceptions.

General Electric has been taking the fish samples since 2004. But officials after several years discovered that they were sampling the fish in a way that was different from how the state had done it earlier. They used a different angle to cut the "filet" or fleshy part that is used for testing purposes.

The discrepancy was discovered in 2011 and has since been corrected.

"In these big Superfund projects we can't watch every single person doing everything," said Kevin Farrar, of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Despite that, it's clear that there has been a longterm reduction of PCBs in Hudson River fish, officials said.

The actual dredging also created some apparent short term jumps in PCB levels, probably due to the disturbances that inevitably come with such an activity.

Scientists were able to find increased PCB levels in pumpkinseed fish, which are quick to absorb and store the suspected carcinogen. Those levels have since subsided.

While the EPA has concluded its dredging, some groups contend that more is needed. And the EPA is still working along the Hudson with the start of floodplain sampling to see if PCBs have been washed into flood-prone areas over the years.

Plants don't absorb PCBs like fish.

But one advisory group member, Washington County dairy farmer Andrew Squire, said he worries that talk of PCBs in grazing lands could create a public relations scare similar to the late 1980s over Alar, used to regulate apple growth. People temporarily stopped buying apples after reports about Alar's toxicity were broadcast. The danger was later found to be exaggerated, according to apple growers.