NEWARK, N.J. - Glimpsed from a commuter train or a passing car, the Passaic River looks like a dreary, coffee-stained channel marred by tumbledown factories, rotting piers and unidentified floating objects.
Up close, the Passaic is even less appealing.
An armada of plastic bottles bob on the surface. During low tide, the shoreline reveals a curious array of sofas, car parts and shopping carts trapped in a muck that smells as bad as it looks.
In some ways, it is even worse than it looks. That sediment, the color and consistency of Hershey's syrup, is a poisonous bisque of heavy metals and noxious chemicals left over from the hundreds of smelters, tanneries and refineries that once nourished former industrial giants like Paterson, Passaic and Newark. Signs posted along the shoreline promise a $3,000 fine to those who catch blue claw crabs and the prospect of cancer to those who eat them.
"When it comes to abused rivers, it doesn't get much worse than this," said Ella F. Filippone, executive director of the Passaic River Coalition, a group that has been working to save the 80-mile waterway since the late 1960s.
Centuries of industry
But after two centuries of degradation, the Passaic is tentatively poised for a recovery. With most offending industries gone and the water quality improving, shad and striped bass are running upstream, drawing leggy white egrets and great blue herons to the mudflats. Up and down the river, cities and suburban towns that used to treat the Passaic like a toilet are planning waterfront promenades and parks. Local crew clubs are rediscovering what was once considered the finest rowing river in the Northeast.
In a Herculean effort to bring back a semblance of the lower Passaic's ecosystem, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency are planning to remove tons of toxic sludge, dismantle ecologically damaging bulkheads and restore long-vanished wetlands along the river's most damaged portion in and around Newark. As the first joint project by the two federal agencies, the proposed Passaic River cleanup would serve as a model for despoiled urban rivers.
That, at least, is how it is supposed to work. Before the project can begin, an assortment of knotty issues must be resolved. There are competing visions of the river's future and the question of who should pay the hundreds of millions of dollars the salvage operation is expected to cost. Some fear that red tape and politics could stand in the way of a cleanup that has been considered for more than 20 years.
"When you have a complex set of issues like these, it's always easiest to kick the problem into someone else's political future," said Bradley M. Campbell, the state commissioner of environmental protection. "We can't let that happen."
In a sense there are two Passaic Rivers: the freshwater segment that loops through four suburban counties; and the urbanized portion south of the Dundee Dam in Garfield, which is tidal, brackish and thoroughly contaminated. At its headwaters in rural Morris County, the Passaic is a crystalline trout stream that burbles through some of the state's most affluent and environmentally conscious communities. But as it passes through the suburbs of Essex, Bergen and Passaic counties, the river is gradually fouled by sewage, oily runoff from streets and the chemicals that keep suburban lawns lush and pest-free. That same water is consumed by more than 3 million people daily.
Although the water is cleaned and chlorinated before it reaches residential taps, environmentalists say it is becoming increasingly compromised by fecal bacteria, algae blooms and elements found in household cleaning products. During droughts, like the one this spring, the water is almost entirely treated effluent, environmental officials say.
"Go out for a beer on Friday night and you can enjoy it in your coffee the next morning," said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey. He and others warn that if sprawl is not kept in check, the entire Passaic watershed could become hopelessly contaminated. "It isn't alarmist to say that unless we take action, the Passaic could die," he said.
The last 17 miles
Yet it is the last 17 miles of the lower Passaic, from the Great Falls in Paterson to Newark Bay, where human intervention has been most devastating. Until the late 19th century, the river was famed for giant sturgeon, regattas, shoreline picnics and country mansions. But the Passaic also fed New Jersey's industrial revolution, powering textile mills and iron works and accommodating the toxic byproducts of progress.
Newspaper accounts from that time tell of mysterious nosebleeds and riverfront homes stripped of paint by the miasma of discharged acids. By 1910, when local officials described the river as "black from sewage and manufacturing waste," the boathouses, swim clubs and fishermen had long since disappeared.
Although the Clean Water Act of 1972 vastly reduced the deluge of pollutants, some of the 60 sewage treatment centers along the river still release millions of gallons of untreated waste during heavy rains. More troubling is the six miles of river bottom around Newark that is heavily infused with dioxin, the poisonous byproduct of the defoliant Agent Orange, which was manufactured here by Diamond Alkali until 1969. Although the source of contamination has since been sealed under a mound of concrete and gravel, researchers have found the dioxin as far out as the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
Still, officials say that if a cleanup is adequately financed, it is possible to remove most of the contaminants and restore plant and aquatic life to the river's lower reaches.
"It may be hard to believe, but our goal is to make the Passaic swimmable, fishable and drinkable again," said George Pavlou, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program in New York and New Jersey.
There are already encouraging signs. Throughout the river's flood-prone midsection, the federal government is planning to buy more than 5,000 acres of wetlands that might otherwise yield more development, and more tainted runoff. In downtown Newark, the Army corps is halfway through construction of a two-mile waterfront promenade. And in nearby Kearny and Rutherford, fleets of sculls glide through a river that despite the filth is prized for its placid surfaces and lack of motorized boat traffic.
Beth Shergalis, 44, of Belleville who is a self-described "river rat," said that she grew up a few dozen yards from the river's edge, but had only recently discovered its charms.
"As a kid, we didn't go anywhere near it," she said. "It was so horribly polluted, and besides, there was always bodies washing up."
The Passaic River Rowing Association in Kearny, where she keeps her boat, sponsors community rowing sessions, crew teams and a youth program with 40 participants. "Once we get people out there, they realize what a fantastic river this is," said Ken Snapp, the association president.
The only downside, Snapp and others say, is the ubiquitous debris that can capsize sculls or puncture their delicate hulls. The Passaic Valley Sewage Commission recently bought a skimmer boat that has helped cut down on the refuse. But until the agency undertakes a multimillion-dollar upgrade of the plant capacity, garbage and untreated sewage will continue to enter the river with the rain.
Who should pay?
While elected officials, environmentalists and polluters agree that the river's resurrection is long overdue, there is an intensifying battle over who should foot the bill.
The Occidental Chemical Corp., the successor to Diamond Alkali, is pushing hard to change the rules that force polluting companies to pay 100 percent of the cleanup costs. Occidental executives say that with the Passaic's long history of industrial excess, it is unfair for them to pay for the mistakes of companies that no longer exist.
"We have a responsibility for some of the degradation, but not all of it," said Michael Turner, a spokesman for Tierra Solutions, a company formed to handle Occidental's toxic legacy.
Backed by a handful of local congressmen and several environmental groups, the company is seeking to limit its liability to 35 percent of the total cleanup cost. Without a change in the law, some fear that Tierra Solutions and other companies will plunge into a long and costly legal fight with the government, and one another, delaying the project for another generation.
Andrew Willner, the New York-New Jersey baykeeper, is fighting the company's well-financed initiative, saying it would set a precedent for the rehabilitation of rivers, saddling taxpayers with mammoth cleanup bills.
"It's illegal, immoral and would send us down a $100 billion slippery slope," he said. "If General Electric has to pay for what they did in the Hudson, why should we let Occidental Chemical off the hook?"
Filippone of the Passaic River Coalition said she appreciates that argument, but she is admittedly parochial when it comes to the river. "Let's be reasonable. This river has been violated for over 200 years and half the companies responsible for this mess are dead," she said. "Besides, this is the only chance we have. If we blow it now, it may never happen, at least not in our lifetime."