HACKENSACK, N.J. - Silk farms. Ski slopes. An atomic-powered city with moving sidewalks. A mammoth shopping mall.
Plenty of plans have been hatched to conquer New Jersey's most infamous of open spaces, the swamps of the Meadowlands.
But the latest grand scheme, perhaps the most ambitious ever, would do little more than return the marshes and mudflats to Mother Nature.
Environmentalists, aided by U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman, a New Jersey Democrat, are pushing what could be a half-billion-dollar plan to preserve the wetlands, reverse decades of toxic abuse, and, in the process, create a model for environmental renewal.
The hurdles to Rothman's "Meadowlands Environmental Park" are many: raising money, plugging leaking landfills and toxic waste dumps, and convincing skeptics the plan won't sacrifice jobs. But after centuries of treating the marshes like North Jersey's ashtray, supporters say it's a vision whose time has come.
"There is a long distance between here and there," Rothman said on a boat tour of the swamps. "But to a large extent, I think the hard part's over - changing the mind-set that this was never possible."
A crossroads
The push comes as the sports complex carved out of the middle of the Meadowlands faces its own crossroads. The Nets, Jets, and Devils want to leave, and state officials are searching for plans to keep the economic wheels spinning in the area. State officials are considering options to replace Continental Arena, including building a convention center.
For the vast salt marshes and streams that weren't paved over to create the arena, it may be just as pivotal a moment.
Federal regulators are considering a plan by Virginia-based Mills Corp. to build 2 million square feet of shopping, entertainment and office space. While activists fight that bid, Rothman is pressing Congress for $5 million, a down payment for preserving all 8,500 undeveloped acres, including the site of the proposed shopping center.
At Rothman's urging, the Army Corps of Engineers and Fish and Wildlife Service are conducting an 18-month study of what properties to preserve and how to restore them.
'Example for the world'
"It could be an example of protecting the natural environment, not only protecting it but rehabilitating it, as an example for the world," said Cliff Day, supervisor of the wildlife agency's New Jersey office. "Twenty million people live within one day of the Meadowlands. They can't get to Yellowstone Park or Acadia [National Park, in Maine]. But they can get to the Meadowlands."
Within a decade, supporters say, a nature preserve 10 times the size of New York's Central Park could take root amid the nation's most densely populated communities. Hikers could tramp along nature trails. Canoeists would paddle the Hackensack River. Students would flock to environmental education centers.
Rothman estimates the project could cost $200 million to $500 million, a hefty sum at a time of budget deficits. Rothman sits on the House Appropriations Committee, where members oversee federal spending and push pet projects, but some question whether he can make it happen.
"The congressman says, 'OK, we'll get the money,'"' said Richard Fritzky, president of the Meadowlands Chamber of Commerce. "Well, where? Every gubernatorial candidate I hear from around the country, every congressional candidate, the president - they all say we don't have the dollars."
Rothman secured $1.2 million for Meadowlands preservation last year and insists more is available: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plans to spend $60 million on environmental projects over the next two years as compensation for dredging projects that disturb marine life. The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission has a $100 million fund for closing garbage dumps that could be tapped. The state has its $1 billion open space fund.
But the key to the park is the Mills property in the heart of the wetlands. The company has offered to give the state its 600 acres in Carlstadt, land that environmentalists covet. In exchange, the developers want the right to build office towers, a 521-room hotel, retail shops, and even an indoor ski slope on what are now parking lots at Continental Arena.
Business leaders and local officials who support some development say they like Rothman's idea of an ecological jewel that attracts tourist dollars. Still, some worry about local economies if all the land is made off limits to developers.
'No economic growth'
"You buy up all the land and preserve it, there is no economic growth," said Moonachie Mayor Fred Dressel. "You're going to have to either say, 'Here's how we're going to help you,' or 'You're not going to grow.'" Fritzky, from the Chamber of Commerce, thinks limited development of contaminated sites could help by generating tax money for some of the huge cleanup bills.
Indeed, in the most ambitious cleanup under way in the district, EnCap Golf Corp. agreed to seal 900 acres of leaking landfills in exchange for permission to build golf courses, housing, and office space.
"We should not develop the wetlands in any way," said Susan Bass-Levine, Gov. James E. McGreevey's commissioner of community affairs, whose department oversees Meadowlands development. "But I also think contaminated sites that we need to clean up could be very expensive. We need to look at creative ways to strike a balance."
To those who say the swamps are too polluted to ever become a national treasure, Rothman points to the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, 1,200 acres in the shadow of the Philadelphia skyline. In the early 1970s, the last freshwater tidal marshes in Pennsylvania were fouled by a nearby oil refinery and slated to be plowed over by Interstate 95.
But conservationists and local politicians banded together to save the land. Today, it hosts 120,000 visitors a year, 280 birds species, fox, fish, deer, muskrats, and an army of wildflowers.
The Meadowlands have the same potential, Rothman said - and would serve a crucial ecological role.
The wetlands act like a sponge, soaking up floodwaters that would otherwise inundate basements in Lyndhurst, Secaucus, Carlstadt and Kearny. A century ago, the Meadowlands covered 21,000 acres. Two-thirds has been replaced by parking lots, shopping malls, and other development. Whatever can be saved is a buffer against flooding, activists say.
Along with the New Jersey Turnpike, the marshes also straddle the Atlantic Flyway, the cross-hemisphere highway for millions of birds migrating between the breeding areas to the north and the wintering grounds in Latin America. Two-thirds of the 450 bird species that pass through the state annually stop in the Meadowlands to rest.
On the boat tour, cormorants perched on the legs of decaying piers. A great blue heron cleaned its feathers on a mudflat. "It's the closest thing to wild space that we have left in the metropolitan area," said Bill Sheehan of the group Hackensack Riverkeeper, as he piloted the boat beneath the noise of the turnpike. Nearby, a troop of diamondback terrapins waddled along the shore.
Of the 8,500 acres environmental groups want to save, much is already owned by local governments or the Meadowlands Commission. Just 1,600 acres are in private hands, including the 600 acres at the Mills Corp.'s Empire Tract.
The property won't come cheap. Mills and its partners have asked for $150 million, though Rothman and environmentalists insist that's an inflated price. Cleaning up Superfund sites and leaking landfills would add millions more to the bill.
If it happens, it would be an unlikely turnaround for the long-maligned Meadowlands.