Posted on September 25, 2024
At issue — how and where some toxic materials dredged from the river will be treated
The Passaic River is one the nation’s most toxic waterways, tainted by the by-products of Agent Orange manufacturing and decades of industrial dumping, leaving the lower 17 miles of the river marked for cleanup in the nation’s most complex environmental remediation effort.
But the bulk of that work still has not started almost 40 years after the river and surrounding areas were placed on the federal Superfund list. Today the Environmental Protection Agency has split the challenge into four parts that it is trying to tackle separately but in concert with each other: the former factory in the Ironbound section of Newark that once produced the defoliant Agent Orange, the lower eight miles of the river, the upper nine miles of the river above that section and Newark Bay.
The EPA has completed interim work to entomb toxic material at the site of the former Diamond Alkali site in Newark. In addition, some material near Lyndhurst was dredged up in 2013.
The EPA has lurched forward toward cleanup in recent years, emphasizing a $1.38 billion plan to carry out an intensive remediation effort on the heavily polluted lower eight miles of the river — the stretch between Newark Bay and the Newark-Belleville border.
It’s that part of the river that contains the bulk of the contamination — the place where dioxin, PCBs, PAHs, and heavy metals like lead and mercury settled into the mud long ago. The EPA’s plan calls for this part of the river to be dredged from bank to bank, ultimately scooping and sucking an estimated 2.5 million cubic yards of polluted sediment from the riverbed.
That plan was first unveiled in 2016, to the relief of community groups who have spent decades pushing for the river to be cleaned.
“It’s a plan that was supported by the Passaic River [Community Advisory Group] members, for the most part, as being a good, but not perfect, cleanup plan,” said Ana Baptista, an environmental justice advocate from the Ironbound neighborhood in Newark and a co-chair of the Passaic River Community Advisory Group.
Occidental Chemical’s plan
Details of how exactly the dredging operation will be carried out have since been drawn up by Occidental Chemical, the company that today is ultimately responsible for conducting and funding the bulk of the work. The EPA reviews and approves Occidental’s plan and maintains oversight of the cleanup. The EPA approved Occidental’s final engineering design work in May, although some parts of that plan may change based on legal agreements and the hiring of a contractor to lead the physical work if that contractor finds yet unconsidered issues.
According to the plan, almost all the material dredged up from the river will be sent to a temporary processing facility that will be built at the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission’s sewage treatment plant in Newark.
But about 20,000 cubic yards, roughly 1% of everything that is planned to be dredged up, cannot be sent to that facility. That material is “non-aqueous phase liquid,” or NAPL. It’s an oily muck that ended up along the Harrison riverfront as a byproduct of processes at PSE&G’s former manufactured gas plant in the town. There, for much of the 20th century, gas was produced by burning coal. The utility has cleaned up the site, but the related pollution on the river bottom remains.
NAPL cannot be treated in the cleanup process in the same manner as the rest of the dredge spoils, because its oily nature would jam up the equipment used to process the rest of the sediment. A separate temporary facility will be needed to handle the NAPL, a place where the substance can be separated from water and then stabilized by mixing with Portland cement.
The EPA and Occidental have decided that the site of the former PSE&G gas plant is the most convenient and appropriate place for the NAPL to be dealt with. The EPA has said it expects dredging up the NAPL will take about seven weeks, and then that material would be processed at the facility over the course of about two months.
A section of the Passaic River that’s set for cleanup, viewed from Riverfront Park in Newark, N.J. on March 7, 2022
Passaic River clean-up effort spotlights two sites : Recent public outreach by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about efforts to remediate the lower Passaic River have highlighted two locations: The former PSE&G gas plant site in Harrison, and the former Diamond Alkali site in Newark.
“We knew that there was going to be some needs around the staging of this. The full extent of that and the nature of that is only now getting figured out because the company, Occidental, did the actual design,” Baptista said. “Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of what it will take to actually do this bank-to-bank dredging.”
PSE&G site in Harrison
Harrison Mayor James Fife, who also chairs the Harrison Redevelopment Agency, said the Passaic River cleanup is critical to the town’s long-term plans for its formerly industrial south end, which has undergone a transformation in recent years. He supports the plan to process NAPL at the PSE&G site.
“Most of the stuff that they’re taking out, Public Service put in,” Fife said. “I’m in favor of getting the river cleaned up, and I’m in favor of getting the coal tar out of there.”
But many residents of Harrison, and surrounding towns like East Newark and Kearny, do not want the EPA to process the NAPL in what is now a residential area. The PSE&G property is a large, vacant plot of land bounded by the Passaic River, Frank E. Rodgers Boulevard, and the Northeast Corridor rail tracks. Immediately to its north, as well as on the other side of Rodgers Boulevard, are large apartment buildings that have opened in recent years as part of Harrison’s revitalization effort.
File photo: Debris along the Passaic River near the stadium for the MLS New York Red Bulls soccer team in Harrison
“EPA is thinking of Harrison as that contaminated community,” said John Pinho, an attorney who grew up in Harrison and is opposed to putting the NAPL treatment facility at the PSE&G site. “It’s no longer that contaminated community.”
Pinho says the community would be better served if EPA put all the sediment processing facilities it needs for the river cleanup in industrial south Kearny, farther downriver from residential areas.
“Take the sludge there,” Pinho said. “It will at least provide a buffer if something happens.”
Public opposition
Roughly 100 people showed up to a community meeting about the Passaic River cleanup hosted by the EPA at Harrison High School last month. During a lengthy public comment portion, dozens voiced their concerns about, and often outright opposition to, the EPA’s plan for their town.
Multiple speakers raised concerns that processing the NAPL at the PSE&G site could release pollution into the air, and those fears seemed to be exacerbated when EPA and Occidental officials said the operation would be open-air. EPA officials said such an incident is unlikely because the contaminants involved are not spread through the air, but emphasized that air monitoring would take place as long as the NAPL treatment facility was in operation.
Many speakers expressed a general distrust of government environmental authorities, stemming from what they described as negative interactions with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection over the nearby Keegan Landfill in Kearny. Rancid odors from the landfill have been known to drift through Harrison and other nearby towns.
For and against
Baptista, the Ironbound advocate, said she is sympathetic to the safety concerns raised at the Harrison meeting, but noted that they echo concerns that Newarkers have had for decades through the campaign to get the river cleaned up. She said it’s important to push the EPA to be as protective of communities as possible, but also to get the work started.
“We’re never going to get to a place where we can reclaim this place for our enjoyment and our kids’ enjoyment if we don’t start somewhere,” Baptista said. “It’s not just for us. It’s for future generations.”
Another view of the former PSE&G gas plant site where it is proposed some dredged material from the Passaic River will be processed
Pinho, who opposes the PSE&G site for treating the NAPL, said he is also worried that using the PSE&G site for the Passaic River remediation will delay the momentum of redevelopment in Harrison. Mayor Fife downplayed that concern. He said PSE&G has made clear to the town that the land won’t be available for redevelopment anytime soon.
“We have plans for it, but Public Service told us that there would be no action, that they’re not going to sell that property for at least 10 years.” Fife said. “So, they’re not in a hurry to sell it. They’re using it as parking for their cars and trucks, and pipes we allow them to store there.”
Occidental has gone to court arguing that other companies responsible for fouling the river should have to contribute more to the cleanup, and that legal fight has delayed the cleanup of the Passaic River’s lower eight miles. The EPA does not yet have the legal agreements in place with PSE&G and Harrison that it needs to use the site for its NAPL treatment facility. EPA officials have said they plan to hold more public meetings about the Harrison plan and the larger cleanup efforts.
A toxic tomb in the Ironbound
Across the river in Newark, the EPA earlier this month proposed a final plan for the site of a former Agent Orange factory that was the source of the worst pollution.
The nearly six-acre site on the banks of the Passaic River at 80-120 Lister Avenue was home to the infamous Diamond Alkali plant, which produced Agent Orange and other pesticides through the 1950s. Other companies used the site for chemical production before and after Diamond Alkali until the earlier ’80s, when dioxin pollution was found emanating through the site and into the surrounding neighborhood.
The EPA responded by demolishing the structures on the site and burying them at the location, along with debris and material tainted by dioxin and other chemicals, in a containment cell that was then covered by a thick, impermeable cap. A flood wall was built to guard against storm surge from the Passaic, and a groundwater treatment system was created to prevent pollution from migrating off-site.
That interim solution to bury and contain the toxic material was completed in 2001. Today, the site looks like nothing more than a big grey mound on the banks of the river, in the shadow of the HelloFresh warehouse next door. EPA reports in the years since have found the measures have been successful in keeping the pollution trapped in place.
File photo: At the front gate of the Diamond Alkali site, 80 Lister Avenue in Newark, photographed in March, 2022
Now the EPA was to make that interim plan permanent, keeping the dioxin-tainted waste buried at the location in perpetuity while upgrading the groundwater treatment system and upgrading the cap and flood wall as needed. EPA expects this plan to cost $16 million.
Baptista said she and others had mixed feelings about the EPA’s desire to leave the toxic waste buried at the industrial edge of the Ironbound.
“I think that there is a frustration that this is going to be a graveyard, while the community was looking at what could be the future uses of this,” Baptista said.
The EPA considered other options, including plans that would have excavated at least some of the material and sent it elsewhere. EPA officials speaking at a public meeting at the New Jersey Institute of Technology on Thursday said they believe these options pose unnecessary dangers to the public by opening the existing cap, and also noted that a full excavation was deemed not possible because of how the flood wall is constructed.
Michele Langa, the staff attorney for NY/NJ Baykeeper and the Hackensack Riverkeeper, as well as the other co-chair of the Passaic River Community Advisory Group, attended the meeting and said she thinks the EPA’s proposal is the right thing to protect public health.
“I think the plan that they’ve come up with is the most efficient for the community. What we’re talking about is not a mild contaminant,” Langa said. “So leaving it where it is and not re-exposing the community to something like that, I think, is more important than taking it away and facing the complicated decision of where to send something like that. We’d be contaminating another community, or some other landfill in the world, and that’s not fair.”
The EPA is accepting public comment on the proposed plan for the former Diamond Alkali site until November 12.
