Welcome to the Grasse River remediation site. This online resource provides both technical detail and answers to commonly asked questions for the Grasse River area community. If this is your first time visiting www.thegrasseriver.com, these points should provide a quick overview to the project and its key details.
The project entered a long-term monitoring and maintenance phase starting in 2022. This includes monitoring of the caps with maintenance performed as necessary and monitoring PCB levels in fish and water. Habitat plantings will be tracked over time to ensure they are recovering as expected.
Elevated levels of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have been found in the Grasse River. PCBs were historically used in many hydraulic and other systems, as was common in many industrial companies and processes across the nation during the 1950s and 1960s. The EPA found that consumption of fish with elevated PCBs levels from the Grasse River presented a potential risk. There is currently an "eat no fish" NYSDOH advisory on the Grasse River from the Power Canal down to the mouth where it enters the St. Lawrence.
Read more about the project in the project overview.
EPA began the Superfund program in 1980 to eliminate potential threats to human health and the environment from hazardous substances that had been released as a result of historic disposal practices. The EPA works closely with communities, the companies responsible for the releases, scientists, researchers, contractors, and state, local, tribal, and federal authorities.
See more about the history of this process in the project timeline.
Conversion of the area to public access is planned but the timing is unknown as access requirements for future Grasse River O&M needs are still being determined.
The fish consumption advisory established by the New York State Department of Health for the lower Grasse River will remain in effect until PCB concentrations in fish are reduced to the point where the advisory is relaxed or lifted by the state. The time for this to occur cannot be predicted with certainty but is expected to take a number of years. PCB levels in fish will be monitored on a regular basis as part of the long-term monitoring program for the project.
After in-river work was completed in 2021, repairs were needed due to ice jams that occurred in 2022 and 2025 in areas that did not have previous evidence of ice jam impacts. Further repair work was also needed following a high-flow event in 2024, caused by the remnants of Hurricane Debby, that resulted in the highest flow ever recorded in the river. To prevent similar damage in the future, the cap repairs used more erosion resistant materials.
We do not anticipate performing repairs every year. Future extreme events such as a major ice jam or high flow event (as occurred in August 2024) will trigger an investigation, and additional repairs will be performed as necessary.
Monitoring data collected since the cleanup was completed in 2021 has demonstrated significant declines in PCB concentrations in both fish and water, indicating there is positive progress toward meeting the objectives outlined in the EPA cleanup plan.