The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed adding the last 19 miles of the Lower Hackensack River to the National Superfund Priorities list, committing federal and state resources to cleaning up decades of deadly industrial toxins buried deep in river sediments. Lined by landfills and factories that processed toxic heavy metals like mercury, arsenic and lead — and carcinogens including PCBs — the river requires a massive cleanup whose cost could easily eclipse the EPA’s $1.7 billion dredge-and-cap project on the Passaic River.
Investigators must now do more sampling and determine which potential polluter could be liable for paying cleanup costs. “…we’re not going to sit around for two decades like we did on the Passaic River,” said state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette.
New Jersey leads the nation in Superfund sites; the Hackensack listing would bring the state’s total to 115.
