The Record
June 15, 2002

CLEANUP OF RIVER OUTLINED AT FORUM;
PASSAIC REVIVAL NEEDS TIME, MILLIONS
By Alex Nussbaum
 

An ambitious cleanup could remake the Passaic River, transforming it from one of the country's dirtiest waterways to a purified river teeming with shad and flowing between shoreline parks.

Reviving the Passaic from Garfield to Newark is still at least a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars away, but it's the lofty goal of a federal and state project outlined at a Newark conference on Friday.

"I don't think you can find a river in the United States or maybe the world that's undergone as much change and degradation as the lower Passaic River," said Tim Iannuzzi, the co-author of a history of the Passaic's glory days and decline. "If it can happen to a river, it's happened here."

A $10 million study of how to clean the river is being conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Office of Maritime Resources. But the report won't be ready until 2007 and the river then will have to compete for scarce resources in Congress, said Brig. Gen. Stephen Rhoades, commander of the Corps' North Atlantic Division.

The vision of the Passaic laid out at the gathering of 90 academics, engineers, and government officials includes a river cleansed of dioxins, heavy metals, and other contaminants, wetlands restored to support wildlife, and empty lots replaced with boat launches and bike trails.

That, proponents argued, would inevitably lead to higher property values, new tax revenues, more jobs, and new businesses around the river, from the Dundee Dam in Garfield and Clifton down to Newark Bay.

That would be a far cry from 1894, when tanneries, mills, and other industries gave the river a reputation for "acid fumes," "nose- bleeding" and "nausea," according to one account at the time. In the 1970s, environmentalists declared it one of the two most fouled rivers in the nation (the other, the Cuyahoga in Cleveland, was so laced with chemicals that it caught fire in 1969.)

The Passaic has come a long way since then, with chemical levels declining and fishing and boating slowly making a comeback, said Iannuzzi and Dave Ludwig, authors of "A Common Tragedy: History of an Urban River."

While no one in the audience argued with the idea of restoring the river, some questioned whether the epic plan would let polluting companies off the hook.

The conference was sponsored by Tierra Solutions Inc., owner of a former Agent Orange factory in Newark responsible for much of the dioxin problems in the Passaic. This new initiative could allow Tierra and other polluters to pay far less than they would under current cleanup laws, said Debbie Mans, a policy associate with NY/ NJ Baykeeper, an environmental group.

"It's tax money that's now going to clean up this river and we didn't pollute it," she said.

Jonathan Deason, an adviser to Tierra's Washington lobbyist, said the companies will spend "100 percent of their fair share" to restore the river. The plan proposed at the conference would mean more of that money goes to the cleanup, he said, rather than litigation between government and the companies.

State and federal officials agreed, promising to go after polluters but saying they would rather work with them.

"Those who suggest the only way we're going to clean up is to get every company, every polluter to clean up - most of those [businesses] are dead, most are no longer operating," U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-Paterson, told the audience. "If we wait any longer, our children and grandchildren are still going to be fighting over the cleanup."