This cleanup project will be paid for by those responsible for the pollution, the EPA says.
By Judith A. Enck
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued its formal plan to protect people's health and benefit riverfront communities by requiring the removal of 3.5 million cubic yards of toxic sediment from the lower eight miles of the Passaic River.
This scientifically-sound plan addresses the extraordinarily high concentrations of cancer-causing contaminants in the lower eight miles of the Passaic River. The EPA will oversee bank-to-bank dredging followed by capping of the river bottom. This ambitious dredging project, one of the largest of its kind in the EPA's 46 year history, charts a course for a cleaner Passaic River.
The EPA's Superfund cleanup of the river will significantly decrease cancer risks and non-cancer health hazards to people who eat fish and shellfish from the lower eight miles by reducing the concentrations of the contaminants in the shallow sediment in the lower eight miles of the river.
Few rivers in America are as prominent and yet as damaged as the lower Passaic River.
Over 100 years of industrial activity has resulted in discharges that left behind toxic muck on the bottom and banks of the river. From Newark Bay to the Dundee Dam in Garfield, the sediment in the Passaic is contaminated with dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls, heavy metals and pesticides.
A major source of dioxin in the river was pollution from the notorious Diamond Alkali Co. facility in Newark, where the production of Agent Orange and pesticides during the 1960s generated dioxin that contaminated the land and the river. Ninety percent of the volume of contaminated sediments in the lower Passaic are in the lower eight miles of the river.
Cleaning up the Passaic will not be easy, but today we've turned a corner. The EPA's final plan, known as a Record of Decision, is based on an extensive study of the lower eight miles of the river developed in consultation with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and reflects years of consultation with the community.
The Passaic is mired with an approximately 10-to-15-foot deep reservoir of contaminated fine-grained sediment in the lower eight miles of the river. Once the top layer of contaminated sediment is removed from the river, a protective cap will be placed over the area that was dredged.
An EPA map of the Passaic River Superfund site. The cap will consist of two feet of sand except along the shore where it will be one foot of sand and one foot of materials to support habitat for fish and plants. The cap will be monitored and maintained in perpetuity to ensure that the cleanup remains protective. In the 1.7 miles closest to Newark Bay, deeper dredging will occur to allow current commercial navigation to continue.
Air and water quality will be monitored during the work. All the work will create hundreds of new jobs.
The work builds on dredging that has already occurred in two smaller areas with high concentrations of contaminants. In 2012, the EPA oversaw dredging in the Passaic near the Diamond Alkali facility in Newark. About 40,000 cubic yards of the most highly dioxin contaminated sediment were removed, treated and then transported by rail to licensed disposal facilities.
In 2013, the EPA oversaw dredging of approximately 16,000 cubic yards of highly contaminated sediment from a half-mile stretch of the Passaic River that runs by Riverside County Park North in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. This area is located about 11 miles north of the river mouth and outside of the lower eight miles addressed in today's record of decision. The work was necessary because the EPA identified particularly high levels of contamination in the surface sediment in that portion of the river.
The federal Superfund law is based on the guiding principle that polluters, not taxpayers, pay the cost of cleanup. This $1.38 billion cleanup project will be paid for by those responsible for the pollution, and we look forward to their cooperation.
The entire record of decision for the lower eight miles of the Passaic River is available at https://semspub.epa.gov/src/collection/02/AR63167 and the EPA's Passaic River Community Involvement Coordinator can be reached at (212) 637-3670, rini.sophia@epa.gov
Judith A. Enck is regional administrator for Region 2 of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, covering New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and eight federally recognized Indian Nations.
The EPA announces a major clean up of the Passaic River at an event at Riverfront Park in Newark, NJ, on Friday, April 11, 2014. (Frances Micklow | The Star-Ledger) Follow NJ.com Opinion on Twitter@NJ_Opinion. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.