Massive Clean-Up Starts with Removal of Toxic Muck From Passaic River

"LYNDHURST — Crews have finished removing just over 16,000 cubic yards of highly toxic sediment from a six-acre mudflat along the Passaic River, an early step in a multi-year federal cleanup spanning from Garfield down to Newark Bay.

The $20 million project, near Riverside County Park in Lyndhurst, is just a small part of what officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expect to be one of the largest federal Superfund projects in history.

The 17-mile stretch of the Passaic contains layers of sediment contaminated with mercury, PCBs and cancer-causing dioxin, a byproduct of the Agent Orange manufactured by the Diamond Alkali Co. plant in Newark during the 1960s."

S.P. Sullivan reports for the Newark Star Ledger June 10, 2014.