With PCB levels in the Stillwater village water supply spiking to record (but still acceptable) levels last month, there is understandable concern about what will happen come spring, when the Hudson River dredging project gets under way in earnest. After balking at local officials’ preferred short-term solution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency appears to have come up with an acceptable alternative: filters.

It is designing a granulated carbon filter system that should remove 95 percent of the PCBs in the village’s water supply (which the town of Stillwater also relies on for some of its water). It intends to have the system online well before the dredging starts in May.

That’s reassuring, since PCB levels in Stillwater’s wells — which are adjacent to the Hudson — reached 160 parts per trillion last month. That’s up nearly 30 percent from the previous high recorded earlier in the year (but still well below the state and federal maximum safe level of 500 parts per trillion). However, village officials expect the levels to climb even higher once the dredging begins, which seems likely even if no one has been able to explain why they’re as high as they already are.

Assuming it’s as effective in removing hazardous PCBs as EPA officials say — and it is important that they monitor the village’s water quality in any event — the filter option makes sense. There’s no need to pursue costlier short-term fixes, like tapping into private water supplies or building long pipelines to hook up temporarily with municipal water systems until the county’s new water system is completed.