(FYI Passaic River dumps into the Newark Bay which is behind Route 440).

Pascrell lashes out at Christie administration over Passaic River cleanup funds

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2013
BY SCOTT FALLON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
LYNDHURST ? Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. lashed out at the Christie administration Wednesday over its plans to divert $40 million from a recent settlement with Passaic River polluters to balance the state budget, saying all the money should be used to restore the blighted waterway.

Addressing local and federal officials at a news conference on cleanup efforts, Pascrell said that, under the Christie plan, almost a third of the $130 million settlement would go to the general fund ?never to be seen again.?

?It is imperative that the full amount of the settlement go towards the restoration of this river,? said Pascrell, D-Paterson, directing his comments at state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin, who sat uneasily at the event at Riverside County Park. ?Chipping away at these funds is the wrong way to move us towards a comprehensive solution.?

Martin said the $40 million is a partial reimbursement for the $120 million the state spent over decades studying the extent of contamination in the Passaic.

The two men?s comments came as federal Environmental Protection Agency officials announced the start of a $20 million project to remove mud from the river?s banks in Lyndhurst that contains high levels of cancer-causing dioxin, mercury and PCBs. EPA officials said Wednesday that a long-awaited cleanup plan for the lower eight miles of the river would be released by the end of the year.

Pollution in the Passaic dates to the late 18th century, when textile mills were built in Paterson. New Jersey has banned fishing and crabbing in the Passaic for more than two decades. But cleanup efforts have begun only in recent years and are targeted at specific areas of the lower Passaic ? a federal Superfund site that stretches 17 miles from Newark Bay to the Dundee Dam in Garfield.

After a seven-year legal battle, the DEP reached a settlement in June with several companies who inherited the liability for the Diamond Shamrock Chemical Co. of Newark, which dumped cancer-causing dioxin into the river in the 1950s and 1960s as a byproduct of manufacturing Agent Orange, the infamous Vietnam War defoliant.

But in the 2014 state budget, the DEP recommends that settlement money from the Passaic case ?not to exceed $40 million shall be deposited in the general fund as state revenue.? Christie signed the $33 billion spending plan in June.

After the budget diversion was first reported in The Record on Monday, Pascrell wrote a letter to Christie on Tuesday asking him to reconsider. A Pascrell spokesman said he has yet to hear from the administration, but Martin was defiant.

Shortly after the news conference, Martin told reporters that Pascrell ?needs to get his facts right,? saying the state deserved to be reimbursed for money it spent to determine the extent of the contamination in the river.

Before the EPA got involved, ?the state spent a lot of money understanding the magnitude of this project,? Martin said.

EPA officials would not reveal any details of the agency?s proposed cleanup plan other than to say it would deal with the lower eight miles of the river from Newark Bay up to Belleville. A study looking into pollution along the entire 17 miles of the lower Passaic isn?t set to be released until 2015.

?The lower eight miles is the most contaminated so that?s where we plan to start,? said Walter Mugdan, an EPA official in charge of Superfund cleanups in New Jersey and New York.

After a series of public hearings on the cleanup plan, the EPA plans to select a remedy next year. That would be followed by two to three years to design it and then five to 10 years for the work to be completed.

?This river poses special problems,? Mugdan said. ?It?s very close to where people live. It?s got a lot of low bridges that need to be raised and lowered for barges to get through. It?s been a logistical nightmare. So there are a lot of challenges.?

Those who have advocated for a cleanup say it can?t come soon enough.

On Saturday, Newark opened a new 7-acre park along the river.

?Many turned and asked, ?Is it clean? Can we fish in it? Can we swim in it? Can we boat in it??? said Ana Baptista, co-chairwoman of a community group advising the EPA on the cleanup. ?It hurt me to say that we still have a lot of work to do on this river. Our work is not done.?

- See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/Pascr ... =all#sthash.XWi2JvNj.dpuf

Jersey City Independent ran a story on August 1, 2013:

June Settlement Inches Forward Passaic River Cleanup; Counter Suit Naming Jersey City an Unrelated Matter, According to Officials

By Matt Hunger ? Aug 1st, 2013 ? Category: Blog, News
With remediation costs expected to exceed one billion dollars, progress towards a cleanup of the Passaic River took a very modest step forward this past June when New Jersey received just $130 million in a settlement with international companies that had purchased some of the parties responsible for leaving dangerous toxins, including dioxin, in the river?s sediment.

Although that decision is far short of the total cost, the victory was celebrated by local environmental groups.

?Holding the polluter accountable will help to remove contaminated sediment from the River and Bay.This is the third victory, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done with the rest of the pollution, and the River and Bay still needed to be cleaned,? Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said in a statement.

?Pollution from this plant has gone on for far too long. The Agent Orange from this plant not only hurt people and destroyed the environment in Vietnam, but people here in Newark. My Uncle Ed and Aunt Lorraine lived three blocks away from the Occidental plant and both died of liver cancer.I know firsthand the impacts this plant has had on the people of Newark and this cleanup is critical to improving the health of residents and the environment surrounding the Passaic River and Newark Bay,? Tittel added in the statement.

Jersey City was named as a part to a counter lawsuit, according to city officials, when the companies looked to spread the blame.

?We were sued by the defendants along with 300 other third party defendants,? said city officials, but these same officials say this counter suit has nothing to do with the production of dioxin. ?There is a federal effort to clean this up being lead by the EPA and we trust that will be the most effective way to accomplish this remediation.?

Jersey Journal published an article on March 25, 2013:

Six Hudson County towns agree to settle polluted Passaic River lawsuit
Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal
March 25, 2013

Six Hudson County municipalities each have agreed to or expect to agree to pay $95,000 to extricate themselves from a lawsuit after being dragged into one of the costliest hazardous waste cases in U.S. history.

When Union City voted to pay its share to settle the lawsuit involving Passaic River pollution on Wednesday, city attorney Neal Moratta explained it was to avoid potential litigation costs that ?could be extremely high.?

At the commission meeting, Moratta explained to residents that a portion of Union City?s sewage is discharged into the Passaic. An official at the hearing said the matter pertains to a 17-mile stretch of the river.

Of the other Hudson County entities named in the suit, Harrison, Bayonne, East Newark and Jersey City have also agreed to pay to settle. Kearny and the Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority have not yet settled but expect to, officials said.

The suit, which involves a potential cleanup costing up to $4 billion, has entangled 85 public entities and 210 private entities, officials said. It stems from the ?50s and ?60s and a now defunct Newark chemical company that dumped cancer-causing chemicals into the river, byproducts of Agent Orange made for the military during the Vietnam War.

Two companies that succeeded that chemical company were sued by the state and they then filed a suit in 2009 claiming towns and other entities were responsible for other pollutants in the river and should help pay any cleanup bill.

That led to a confidential, potential settlement agreement stipulating that claims against all but the original companies named in the suit could be dismissed if the municipalities each agreed to pay the state $95,000 and the private entities each pay $195,000.

The proposed settlement calls for at least 75 percent of the private companies named as third parties to agree to settle, and at least 50 percent of the public entities named as third parties. A judge set Friday as the deadline for the individual entities to notify the court as to whether they will settle.

If a settlement is reached, a judge will review it to determine if it is acceptable. The original chemical companies will be able to contest an agreement.

An attorney with knowledge of the suit said Friday he did not know how many entities had agreed to settle.

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index ... n_county_towns_agree.html