U.S. Study to Focus on Passaic River
The Record
By: Jan Barry, Staff
Nov.
29, 2000
From Paterson's scenic Great Falls to the grimy industrial
waterfront of Newark's Ironbound section, urban stretches of the Passaic River will be the focus of a federal
study on ways to restore the polluted waterway.
The $100,000 project is aimed at providing a comprehensive plan for
finally cleaning up a long-neglected section of North Jersey's longest river, which flows through several
cities and densely populated suburbs in Passaic, Bergen, and Essex counties.
Federal and state officials will announce details of the project
today at the Newark Club, in an office building overlooking a crumbling stretch of Passaic River bank in
downtown Newark. The site is being turned into a park designed to attract visitors back to a waterway that
city residents have long shunned.
Acting as hosts today are Rep. Robert Menendez, D-Union City, and
Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson, who shepherded legislation through Congress to provide funding for the
Army Corps of Engineers to do a cleanup study.
"We're looking to make the Passaic River a better place
environmentally, economically, and recreationally," Pascrell aide Joe Waks said Tuesday.
A statement about the project painted a dramatic picture of impending
improvement to a river that was a sewer from the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century
through the 20th century.
"The Passaic River Restoration Initiative will serve as the
pilot project study for [a] unique, nationwide effort to correct more than two centuries of degradation to
urban waterways and their tributaries," the statement said.
Army Corps of Engineers officials, who have been working with various
state and federal agencies to create a $75 million waterfront park near the New Jersey Performing Arts Center
in Newark, characterized the Passaic River study as one among many by the corps across the nation.
"We do environmental restoration reconnaissance studies all the
time on various river basins," said Paul Tumminello, project manager for the corps' flood control project
in the Passaic River basin.
"We're doing one now on the Hudson-Raritan estuary," which
encompasses the ocean bay areas that border New Jersey and New York City, Tumminello said. Other studies being
done in the region concern the Saw Mill and Bronx rivers in New York.
Upstream of the urban sector of the Passaic River, the corps has been
working with the state Department of Environmental Protection on a flood-control plan that includes buying
wetlands to curb development in flood plains.
"We have the demonstrated expertise in this area, and we're
happy that the Congress has the confidence in the Army Corps of Engineers to do a study of this nature,"
said an agency spokesman, Peter Schugert.