Pockets of highly contaminated Passaic River sediment in
Bergen and Passaic counties would be partially excavated and capped with a
barrier under plans being considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, officials said.
Cleaning up 9 miles of the Passaic — from North Arlington to
the Dundee Dam in Clifton and Garfield — would not be as massive as the
still-pending $1.4 billion plan to partially dredge the river's lower 8 miles
from bank to bank in Newark and Hudson County.
Instead, contractors are targeting hot spots contaminated
with cancer-causing dioxin, PCBs and other industrial pollution that have made
the Passaic one of the most polluted waterways in the U.S.
But the EPA's proposal to leave a portion of the pollution
under a barrier — a strategy that it has often been used at other contaminated
sites — has drawn criticism for both portions of the Passaic cleanup.
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