The ebb and flow of the Hudson's comeback

OFF GRAND VIEW

Bobby Gabrielson Jr. cut the engine on his 23-foot fishing boat while cars and trucks passed overhead on the Tappan Zee Bridge.

The air smelled of saltwater and fish as the boat rose and fell on the Hudson River's soft swells.

Gabrielson and his assistant, Michael Frank, began hauling in some of the 85 crab pots they had set out hours earlier. Frank pulled the first string of cages from the water while Gabrielson emptied the cages of their contents: blue crabs, which pinched reflexively and every once in a while scored a hit on the fisherman's hands.

Gabrielson has been fishing the Hudson for nearly 40 years, following the example of his father, a river fisherman for more than six decades. He's seen many changes in the river, and said efforts to clean the Hudson had been successful.

"There's a lot more boats, a lot more people fishing now," Gabrielson said. "I feel the river has come back dramatically."

Thirty-five years after the passage of the federal Clean Water Act, the Hudson River is unquestionably cleaner than it's been in decades.

But cleaner doesn't mean clean, and the legacy of pollution that once turned the river into an open sewer continues to dictate the public's interaction with it.

Catching, selling and eating fish and shellfish remains restricted due to health concerns. And contact with the water - by swimmers, boaters, paddlers, personal watercraft users and beachcombers - remains risky due to raw sewage and health concerns.

Experts said many contaminants in the river continue to pose a risk to people, as well as the wildlife, aquatic life and plant life of the Hudson.

Two main culprits are cause for the most concern when it comes to people and their direct contact with the river.

One is aging sewage treatment plants and combined sewer overflow systems that leak harmful bacteria into the Hudson. The other is polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs - man-made chemicals dumped into the river decades ago that have found their way into the aquatic food chain and are the main reason for most fish advisories issued by the state Health Department.
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