EPA to put Hackensack River on its Superfund list to address pollution

By: Scott Fallon
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... the lower Hackensack River has been nominated for placement on the federal Superfund list of most toxic sites in the nation in a bid to compel polluters to pay for a large-scale cleanup of the polluted waterway, federal officials announced Thursday. [03/17/2022]
..... The move by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency begins a long legal and bureaucratic journey that advocates hope will end with a century of contamination being removed from the Hackensack.
..... "We think it's really good news, because it's the best course for making sure there is a process for cleaning up the river," EPA Regional Administrator Lisa F. Garcia said in a briefing with reporters.
..... The river is strews with pollution over the course of 19 miles, from the industrial confines of Newark bay to the leafy suburbs that surround the Ordell Dam upriver.
..... Elevated levels of cadmium, lead, mercury, cancer-causing dioxin and PCBs found in hundreds of sediment samples collected over years of study led EPA officials to conclude that the pollutions is a potential health threat to humans and wildlife.
..... If the designation is approved after a 60-day comment period, the Hackensack would become New Jersey's 115th Superfund site - the most by far in the nation.
..... Shawn M. LaTourette, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said he understands that naming yet another Superfund site may continue to perpetuate New Jersey's reputation as a dumping ground, whether earned or not.
..... "The opposite is true," he said at the briefing. A" Superfund designation is a mark of our resolve, an acknowledgment that modern society, for all of its advances, also produced environmental ills that we can correct."
..... The move on Thursday [03/17/2022] is the culmination of years of lobbying by the environmental group Hackensack Riverkeeper.
..... While the rive is still polluted with industrial materials, efforts to control dumping, curb sewage and restore adjacent land to its natural state have improved the health of the Hackensack. This is especially true in the Meadowlands, where eco-tours, bird watchers, kayakers and thrill-seekers on jet skis can all be found on any given summer day.
..... "We've already proved that people in this part of the state want to sue the river," said Bill Sheehan, executive director of Hackensack Riverkeeper.
..... Guvnor Phil Murphy's administration took a major step last year [2021] when the state announced it would support placing the Hackensack on the Superfund list.
..... When the rive officially becomes a Superfund site, the government will likely target current and former industrial property owners along the river-bank to pay for the cleanup.
..... The EPA right now is focused on cleaning up 19 miles of the lower Hackensasck's 23 miles from Newark Bay upriver.
...... That means the cleanup may not go as deep into northern Bergen County as originally believed unless more pollution is found there.

A slow process

..... Superfund cleanups proceed at a glacial pace, especially when multiple polluters blame one another for the bulk of the contamination.
..... This has been seen most extensively on the highly contaminated Passaic River. No major work has been done on the Passaic in eight years after EPA officials unveiled a $1.7 billion cleanup plan.
..... Other river cleanups have been more successful, even with a combative polluter.
..... Millions of cubic years of PCB-tainted sediment was removed from the Hudson River from 2009 to 2015 in upstate New York after years of battles between the EPA and General Electric Company, whose two plants released cancer-causing chemicals into the waterway. Environmental advocates say more PCBs need to be dredged from the Hudson to return it to better health.

HOME