The Hudson is now so clean that everyone can eat from it

DUSK AT The Battery, a park on Manhattan’s southern shore, is bustling. Joggers push past tourists waiting for ferries to the Statue of Liberty and families picnic nearby. At a pier over the Hudson, Seth Fera-Schanes sets up his fishing rods. He reels off a list of the fish swimming below: striped bass, black sea bass, tautog. Mr Fera-Schanes is a licensed guide, offering lessons through his company Central Park Fishing. His students are mostly tourists or families, who throw their catches back into the Hudson. But now, there is another option: eating the fish.

For the first time in 50 years, some fish caught in the Lower Hudson river are safe for everyone to eat. According to advice issued by the New York Department of Health earlier this month, one portion of striped bass a month should do no harm, regardless of who is eating it (previous guidance warned off children and women who might become pregnant). The new recommendations mark a striking turnaround. Once lined with factories and with New York City at its mouth, the Hudson earned the grim distinction of being one of the country’s largest Superfund sites.

“The Hudson was considered more or less an open cesspool,” says Stuart Findlay, who studies the river at the Cary Institute, a local research organisation. Of all the sludge and sewage dumped in the river, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a kind of insulating fluid used in capacitors, were the most significant. Beginning in the 1940s, General Electric (GE) used PCBs in two factories along the Hudson. The chemicals probably cause cancer: the Environmental Protection Agency banned their manufacture in 1977 and in 1984 declared a 200-mile stretch of the Hudson, starting from The Battery, a Superfund site.

GE has been tasked with cleaning up the waste. Starting in 2009, dredgers removed 2.75m cubic yards (2.1m metres cubed) of gunk: enough of the stuff to fill 100 New York City blocks 1m deep. The project took six years and cost $1.7bn, but did eventually get most of the PCB-flavoured mush.

You can swim in the river “almost always, almost everywhere, almost all the time”, says Mr Findlay. “The Hudson is this great recovery story,” echoes Tracy Brown of Riverkeeper, an advocacy organisation. The river is not quite a buffet: eating a fish caught farther north is still off the menu, as are some species. Ms Brown guesses she would eat one (she has “a pretty high risk tolerance”). Mr Findlay concludes that he is “old enough” to try. The fish, of course, may have other ideas. Mr Fera-Schanes and your correspondent left The Battery with nothing but leftover bait: shrimp from a local Whole Foods.■