The Hudson River runs past New York City. Once lined with factories and with New York at its mouth, it earned the grim distinction of being one of America's largest Superfund sites. "The Hudson was considered more or less an open cesspool," according to Stuart Findlay of the Cary Institute.
Of all the sludge and sewage dumped in the river, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—insulating fluid used in capacitors—were the most significant. Beginning in the 1940s, General Electric 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 at Manhattan's southern tip, a Superfund site.
GE was tasked with cleaning up the waste. Starting in 2009, dredgers removed 2.75m cubic yards of contaminated sediment—enough to fill 100 New York City blocks one metre deep. The project took six years and cost $1.7bn.
By 2026 the river had recovered substantially. You can swim in it "almost always, almost everywhere, almost all the time", according to Mr Findlay. For the first time in 50 years, some fish caught in the Lower Hudson are safe for everyone to eat: the New York Department of Health advised that one portion of striped bass a month should do no harm. Eating fish caught farther north remains off the menu, as do some species. Tracy Brown of Riverkeeper, an advocacy organisation, calls the Hudson "this great recovery story."
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?"