$20M removal of 'highly contaminated mud' from Passaic River underway in Lyndhurst

[acabtp]

Originally Posted by basspilot

I'm kind of curious how long the toxins currently in the fish and other creatures in the passsic will take to be called "safe" to eat. I would imagine this will take a while but its good to see the passaic finally receive the attention its deserved for decades.

in all likelihood, the lower passaic river, hackensack river, and the whole newark bay complex will never be safe to eat fish from again.

removing all of the contaminated sediment will never happen, there is just too much. right now, they are concentrating efforts on the sediments where dioxin is highly concentrated as a result of agent orange manufacturing back during the vietnam war. but dioxin is just one high profile type of a huge number of contaminants in the water there, a small portion of a huge problem. a lot of other issues, like heavy metal contamination, remain waiting there, without breaking down, effectively forever. every storm that stirs up mud, every crab that burrows around, ever bottom feeding fish that kicks up the silt... they are all slowly releasing the contaminants back into the water.