Cleaning River May Cost $2.3B ; EPA Outlines Seven Plans for Restoring the Passaic

By ALEX NUSSBAUM, STAFF WRITER

Removing the toxic chemicals that foul the lower Passaic River could cost up to $2.3 billion, the federal government said Thursday, as it outlined what could become one of the costliest pollution cleanups in U.S. history.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it is considering seven options for restoring the heavily contaminated river, where dioxin, pesticides, heavy metals and other chemicals have spread as far north as Garfield and the city of Passaic.

The cheapest option entombing the contaminated riverbed under a dirt cap could cost at least $900 million. Completely removing 11 million cubic yards of toxic sediment could run more than twice that, the agency estimated.

“This is going to be one of the most significant river restorations in the history of the United States,” said Alan Steinberg, the EPA’s regional administrator. “You’re talking about a river that runs through one of the most populated areas of the state and a river that was subject to a terrible environmental destruction.”

Steinberg said the companies responsible for polluting the river would foot the bill a vow that could set up a long fight among the industries that have set up shop along the Passaic over the years.

The proposals call for dredging or capping toxic sediment only in the lower portion of the river, in Kearny, Harrison and Newark. Still, environmental groups and state regulators long critical of the EPA for moving too slowly said they welcomed the announcement as a step forward for the entire area.

“Removing those sediments would go a long way toward moving this river toward being fishable and swimmable,” said Lisa Jackson, the state’s environmental protection commissioner. “This is by far the lion’s share of the contamination.”

“The sooner you get the bulk of the contaminants out, the sooner it will be that the entire river gets cleaned up,” said Andrew Willner, executive director of NY-NJ Baykeeper, an environmental group.

The EPA hopes to pick one of the options by November, Steinberg said. After a public comment period, it should finalize the plan by early next year, he said. It is unclear how long it would take to actually start work on the river.

Centuries of discharges from factories, municipal sewers and other sources have left the river a toxic mess as far north as the Dundee Dam in Passaic County. The state warns against consuming fish or shellfish caught anywhere in that stretch, though authorities say many poor and immigrant families still use the Passaic as an essential source of food.

In 2002, a state study found eating just one crab from the river could raise a person’s cancer risk for his or her entire lifetime.

The biggest source of pollution, state regulators and environmentalists say, is the cancer-causing dioxin dumped in the river in the 1950s and 1960s by Diamond Shamrock’s herbicide factory in Newark. Among other chemicals, the company produced Agent Orange, the Vietnam-era defoliant blamed for illnesses among American soldiers.

Tides have spread the material up the river as far north as the dam, as well as down into Newark Bay, the EPA found. Willner said the company’s dioxin has also been found in the Hackensack River.

The EPA’s options range from capping sediments in the lower 8 miles of the river, at an estimated cost of $900 million to $1.1 billion, to digging up that stretch, for $2 billion to $2.3 billion.

In between are a series of proposals that would dredge a smaller portion, as well as plans to restore a navigation channel up the river. The federal government used to dredge the channel regularly, but stopped in the 1980s because of the cost of disposing of contaminated soil. The agency is also legally required to consider the option of doing nothing.

In the end, the project is likely to be one of the most expensive Superfund cleanups in U.S. history, Steinberg said.

“We will get this river cleaned up and make it a jewel of New Jersey,” he added.

How cooperative the industries will be remains to be seen. A group representing several of the companies, the Lower Passaic Cooperating Parties, issued a statement Thursday saying they were reviewing the EPA’s proposals and added that they had “no direct involvement” in the plan.

Some of the companies agreed last month to a $73 million study of the 17 miles of the river south of the dam. That study would go ahead and could produce more action beyond the dredging or capping, Steinberg added.

Willner and other activists said they preferred dredging the river, especially since leaving the contamination in place under a cap would cost nearly as much. Jackson, the environmental commissioner, said she wasn’t ready yet to make a recommendation.

She said the EPA’s move vindicated New Jersey’s aggressive stance toward the companies in recent years. The state Department of Environmental Protection has sued Diamond Shamrock’s successor and ordered companies to prepare for dredging.

“I absolutely and totally believe that DEP’s actions are what caused them to accelerate their look at early action,” she said.

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E-mail: nussbaum@northjersey.com

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