News Coverage
$80 million Passaic River cleanup planned
STAFF & WIRE REPORT
A massive $80 million cleanup of the Passaic River will remove hundreds of tons of dioxin-laden sediment contaminating the river, EPA officials announced today.
The work is planned to remove half of all cancer-causing chemicals in the river, they said.
The project will begin in front of the now-shuttered Diamond Shamrock plant in Newark, whose products included Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War. A second phase will remove additional sediment from areas near the plant.
Together, about 200,000 cubic yards of the most-contaminated mud are to be removed.
Officials say the $80 million project will be paid for by Occidental Chemical and Tierra Solutions and take about two-and-a-half years to complete.
The agency has been delayed in deciding how to clean up the most heavily-polluted segment of the river, the eight-mile lower stretch between Newark Bay and the Dundee Dam in Passaic County. The EPA had pledged to select a remedy by last fall.
The lower Passaic is polluted by decades of discharges from chemical plants, factories and municipal sewers. The most worrisome contamination is the cancer-causing dioxin dumped in the river in the 1950s and 1960s by the now-defunct Diamond Shamrock herbicide factory in Newark.
Dioxin levels in some parts of the Passaic are about a half-million times greater than those typically found in an urban river, according to state environmental officials.
A massive $80 million cleanup of the Passaic River will remove hundreds of tons of dioxin-laden sediment contaminating the river, EPA officials announced today.
The work is planned to remove half of all cancer-causing chemicals in the river, they said.
The project will begin in front of the now-shuttered Diamond Shamrock plant in Newark, whose products included Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War. A second phase will remove additional sediment from areas near the plant.
Together, about 200,000 cubic yards of the most-contaminated mud are to be removed.
Officials say the $80 million project will be paid for by Occidental Chemical and Tierra Solutions and take about two-and-a-half years to complete.
The agency has been delayed in deciding how to clean up the most heavily-polluted segment of the river, the eight-mile lower stretch between Newark Bay and the Dundee Dam in Passaic County. The EPA had pledged to select a remedy by last fall.
The lower Passaic is polluted by decades of discharges from chemical plants, factories and municipal sewers. The most worrisome contamination is the cancer-causing dioxin dumped in the river in the 1950s and 1960s by the now-defunct Diamond Shamrock herbicide factory in Newark.
Dioxin levels in some parts of the Passaic are about a half-million times greater than those typically found in an urban river, according to state environmental officials.