EPA's Clean Up Of Hackensack Will Take Decades, Hundreds Of Millions

SECAUCUS, NJ — On Tuesday, Nov. 12, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave a public presentation at the tech school by Laurel Hill on the status of the Lower Hackensack River being a Superfund site.

And the biggest takeaway from the meeting?

It will likely take multiple decades before the federal government's clean-up of the Hackensack is finished.

"I'm sure you've heard Superfund clean-ups take a really long time," EPA Regional Plan administrator Lisa Garcia told the audience Tuesday night. "For complex sites like the Lower Hackensack, it can take a long time, often a decade, and then years after that."

How will the EPA do the clean up? They will likely do large-scale dredging of the mud along the river banks and in the mud flats. The EPA said they plan to keep most of the river open for public use during the clean-up.

The EPA first declared the Lower Hackensack a Superfund site in 2022. The designation means either private companies or federal dollars will pay to do a clean up. The EPA said a clean-up of the Hackensack will cost "a couple hundred million" in total.

It's not the river water that is polluted: It is the mud in the mud flats, along the river banks and at the bottom of the river. That mud and muck has tested high for chromium, arsenic, lead, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), according to the NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette was also there Tuesday night). Among other heavy industry along the river in the past century, there were three major chromium plants that left behind a chromium residue in the river.

The EPA said it really wants the involvement of the community — residents of Secaucus and all towns along the river — to get their input in the clean-up process. The EPA seeks to create a Community Advisory Group. To join, a member of the public just needs to email an EPA Community Involvement Coordinator and ask how to join. Email:

Shereen Kandil
kandil.shereen@epa.gov
(212) 637-4333

Or

Miriam Hunte
Hunte.miriam@epa.gov
212-637-3731

It is a very long stretch of the Hackensack that the EPA has determined is in need of a clean-up: 19 miles (22 river miles) from Oradell Dam to Newark Bay.

The most recent major action the EPA has taken is they identified what they call the "Kearny peninsula" or "Marion Reach" as the first area to be cleaned up. This is an industrial area that stretches from river mile 2 to mile 5.5, near Kearny and Jersey City. In October, the EPA said it reached an agreement with five companies that used to operate factories there, and they agreed to pay to investigate the area to see if it needs to be cleaned. That investigation alone will cost $30 million; the EPA said the five companies agreed to pay that.

It was Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack Riverkeeper, who first asked the EPA to investigate whether the Hackensack River qualified to be a Superfund site. The EPA "immediately" accepted his request, Sheehan revealed at the meeting Tuesday night.

"It took me a long time to accept the idea of having this be a Superfund site," said Sheehan. "For too many years, people were making the wrong decision about this river. When I first started Riverkeeper in the '90s, people said to me, why do you want to keep (protect) that river? But people are now using the river. Thousands of people come to our pontoon boat rides, our river clean-ups. They want to enjoy the river and they don't want to have the worry in the back of their head that they're gonna get sick from it. We're gonna come up with a plan to make this river shine."

The EPA now has three goals:

- Make responsible parties clean up the site, or pay for clean-up work

- Involve local communities that live along the river (Secaucus)

- Return the river to productive use (the Hackensack has long been open for kayaking, jet skiing, boating and even fishing, although it is strongly advised not to eat fish or crabs caught in the Hackensack). When the EPA first declared the Hackensack a Superfund site, it said it did not expect much of the river to be closed off to the public, as some had feared.

Lower Hackensack River Superfund site profile from the EPA: www.epa.gov/superfund/lower-hackensack-river

Previously on Patch: Lower Hackensack River Officially Declared A Superfund Site (2022)