Filthy river called ‘N.J.’s biggest crime scene’ may finally get cleanup

Maria Moreno doesn’t know what it would take for her to eat fish reeled in from the Passaic River.

Or to even consider swimming in it.

“No, probably never and I never have,” Moreno, 78, told NJ Advance Media in Spanish from Newark’s Essex County Riverfront Park on an overcast Thursday.

“People sometimes don’t know that you shouldn’t go in,” added Moreno, while taking her afternoon walk. “We heard there were visitors from Brazil swimming in it (about three months ago). They didn’t know.”

Moreno moved to New Jersey’s largest city about 25 years ago from Ecuador. That entire time she and neighbors haven’t needed signs along the waterfront close to one of nation’s most toxic parcels to know that incidentally or purposely interacting with the river water was a bad idea. Locals just know.

And while Moreno thinks city and state government leaders need to move quicker on finally cleaning Newark’s toxic sites, it will take a lot to convince her the water is safe.

Regulators with the Environmental Protection Agency say progress is now being made on addressing the toxic Passaic River and nearby contaminated sites — including a factory that once produced the defoliant Agent Orange — which have been on the federal Superfund Site list since 1984.

An expansive cleanup of the area will be multi-pronged, complicated and expensive.

Members of the public, some of which joined a recent meeting to voice feedback on remediation plans, can make written comments from now to Nov. 12 on a series of proposals to clean up the toxic Diamond Alkali site portion. Work on the other sections is ongoing.

“The dioxin on the site and contamination in the river has contributed to the health disparities we see in the Ironbound and compounds on the cumulative impacts we face from other facilities,” Vanessa Thomas, an environmental justice organizer with nonprofit Ironbound Community Corporation, told NJ Advance Media on Friday.

Thomas, who lives in the Ironbound, said besides the Diamond Alkali site her neighborhood is home to New Jersey’s largest garbage incinerator, largest sewage waste treatment facility and three natural gas-fired power plants. A fourth plant in the high truck traffic area is currently under consideration by the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission.

The feds have previously said a nine-mile section of the Passaic River is estimated to cost $441 million to remediate and another roughly eight-mile stretch will cost about $1.4 billion.

The other two parts that make up the cleanup site — split into four total simply because of how extensive the initiative is — consist of 80 and 120 Lister Avenue in the Ironbound, as well as Newark Bay.

Occidental Chemical, also known as OxyChem, took over the Lister Avenue site from Diamond Alkali and is considered responsible for that section of the pollution despite some back-and-forth. Under EPA oversight, OxyChem has outlined what remediation of the area would look like, Stephen McBay, a spokesman with the agency, confirmed in an email.

An OxyChem spokesman on Thursday declined to comment on the latest cleanup announcement.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who once called the Passaic River “New Jersey’s biggest crime scene,” this week reiterated the environmental injustice faced by the mostly Black and brown neighborhoods that surround the region.

Booker told NJ Advance Media that “decades of corporate greed have robbed the people of New Jersey of one of our greatest natural resources, the Passaic River.”

“While I’m glad to see the newest announcements from the EPA to move forward with the Passaic River clean-up, we must ensure that all plans adequately protect our communities and move forward with the urgency needed so that future generations may finally enjoy the benefits of a clean river,” Booker said.

Not wanting an ‘unusable graveyard’

The removal of contaminants from the river at the “Diamond Alkali site” — substances like polychlorinated biphenyls (“PCBs”), mercury, copper and lead — has been done slowly and in phases.

Although some work to cap and contain toxic material at the site near a Lyndhurst park was done about a decade ago, much of the remediation throughout the toxic patch of land and water remains.

A cleanup summary released by the EPA in 2016 called for removing “about 3.5 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment” from the Passaic River. That built on removal projects from 2012 to 2014 that got rid of about 56,000 cubic yards of contaminants.

In addition to toxins and pesticides like DDT known to lie beneath the water’s surface, parts of the river inland are often littered with trash and debris.

As far as the Diamond Alkali site, the EPA said this month that of four proposed alternatives, it favored the second. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection agreed with the EPA’s choice.

That would mean using $16 million to make a temporary plan permanent. Over two decades ago, EPA crews took down the former Lister Avenue plant and buried toxic materials on location. A flood wall was also constructed amid potential impacts from rising waters at the Passaic River and a groundwater conveyance system was made to contain pollution.

Keeping the pollutants, including harmful chemicals, on-site as part of the second alternative has drawn mixed reactions.

However, the EPA said the other options were not feasible or came with risks that could be avoided, such as potentially exposing people and animals to contaminants during cleanup efforts (a timeline for which was unclear as of this week).

The Ironbound Community Corporation — and other groups like the NY/NJ Baykeeper and South Ward Environmental Alliance — have been critical of just how long the cleanup has taken.

The ICC specifically created the “Ironbound Community Against Toxic Waste” group in the early 1980s to fight for the Diamond Alkali facility to get a Superfund designation in the first place.

“Since finding out about the contamination in the early ‘80s, our community has wanted the dioxin removed completely,” said Thomas, of the Ironbound Community Corporation. “While we understand the difficulties associated with full removal, we are disappointed that the final plan does not include full removal of dioxin from the site.”

The group also says it is concerned with the future of the site and whether the state will consider commemorating the people most impacted by its long-standing pollution (”rather than be an indefinitely unusable graveyard,” said Thomas).

Like other groups, she encouraged people with connections to the site to submit comments to the EPA via email at Naranjo.eugenia@epa.gov.

OxyChem’s cleanup plan, which has not been finalized, also notes that nearly all the material will be dredged and processed at a nearby sewage water treatment facility that still needs to be built.

Roughly 20,000 cubic yards of the material, known as non-aqueous phase liquid, can’t be sent to that facility because it can’t be processed the same as the other sediment due to its makeup. EPA officials and company representatives proposed it be sent a former PSE&G plant in Harrison instead.

Again, this facet of the cleanup proposal has drawn mixed responses. Some town officials support the plan but residents worry over the liquid material being sent to the neighboring town.

To learn more about the cleanup proposal and site history click here and here. Written comments on the plan can also be sent by mail to Eugenia Naranjo, Remedial Project Manager, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, at 290 Broadway — 18th Floor, New York, NY 10007.

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Steven Rodas may be reached at srodas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X at @stevenrodasnj.