"Once Feared, Now Celebrated, Hudson River Cleanup Nears Its End"

"For half a decade, General Electric has been paying for a massive dredging operation on the upper Hudson River in New York.

The billion-dollar cleanup, designed to remove toxic PCBs, sparked fierce controversy when it was proposed. But as the project enters its final summer, it's been so successful that even some of the cleanup's most vocal critics want it expanded.

Just offshore in Mechanicville, three hours north of New York City, barges shuttle back and forth across the Champlain Canal, a waterway linked to the Hudson River. A backhoe is digging up great gobs of PCB-contaminated muck.

"The good news is we're finishing the dredging and then we anticipate [that] over a decade or decades, that the fish advisories will begin to be reduced," says Gary Klawinski, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Hudson River field office."

Brian Mann reports for NPR June 6, 2015.