Stew of contaminants found in Hackensack riverbed tests

• The highest reading of mercury was found in mudflats opposite Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus.
• Other high levels of mercury were found in Little Ferry, Carlstadt and East Rutherford.
• In some core samples, as many as 20 or more contaminants were detected.

Hundreds of sediment samples taken from the Hackensack River indicate that the riverbed is laced for 22 miles with a toxic cocktail made up of dozens of contaminants, from its mouth in Newark Bay up to the Oradell Reservoir.

The samples affirm earlier research by the Environmental Protection Agency, which found elevated levels of cadmium, lead, mercury, cancer-causing dioxin and PCBs, enough for the EPA to conclude the river's contaminants cause a potential health threat to humans and wildlife.

The sediment samples were the most recent step in the EPA’s effort to determine whether the lower Hackensack should be added to the Superfund program, which is designed to clean up the nation’s most contaminated sites.

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The EPA and the state Department of Environmental Protection are still analyzing the sediment data and have not come to any conclusions about it, officials from both agencies said.

Any decision could be influenced by the national political climate. During the election campaign, Donald Trump promised to dismantle or seriously scale back the EPA, and Scott Pruitt, the president's pick to head the agency, is expected to cut staffing levels.

It's not clear what that would mean for the Superfund program, since cleanup costs are often covered by companies shown to have caused the pollution.

Several experts on river pollution who have seen the Hackensack data agree that the sediment samples show a widespread array of contamination that could pose a hazard.

They also express concern that, while contaminants are often viewed in isolation, the many contaminants in the Hackensack could possibly interact with one another, becoming more potent risks. Already research has shown the Hackensack pollution has caused severe abnormalities in aquatic life in the river.

“The river will never meet the federal clean water standards until the sediments are either removed or remediated in some manner,” said Beth Ravit, a Rutgers University environmental scientist who has researched aquatic life in the Hackensack. “It is also problematic to base the need for cleanup on one substance, albeit a very toxic one, such as mercury. The stew of organics and metals really needs to be considered.”

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Michael Kruge and Kevin Olsen, two Montclair State University experts on contaminated sediments who also looked at the Hackensack data, agreed. “While a full analysis of this type of data usually takes several months, a spot-checking of a small number of data points showed instances where sediment contamination exceeds the thresholds where marine life can be harmed," Olsen said.

In some core samples, as many as 20 or more contaminants – both heavy metals and organic compounds – were detected.

More than 400 sediment core samples, some from the upper 4 inches of sediment and some from up to 7 feet deep, were taken at 190 spots along the river last summer.

The lower Hackensack and its tributaries form the Meadowlands, a key spawning area for fish that provides vital habitat for stressed species of birds, fish and turtles and is an important stopover point for migrating birds along the Atlantic Flyway.

Though the Hackensack's water quality is improving and more people use it to kayak, the bulk of pollution remains in the sediment. Swimming is prohibited, and the state warns against eating fish or crabs caught in the river, since mercury can build up in the fish and affect the nervous systems of people who eat them.

Trouble spots

Mercury was detected in elevated levels throughout the riverbed, including some particularly high readings.

The EPA and the DEP do not have a specific cleanup standard for mercury in sediment. Still, many guidelines consider levels above 1 part per million to be a potential risk. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has cited recent studies that show “lethal and sub-lethal effects in adult fish” even when mercury concentrations are well below 1 to 5 parts per million.

Sediment samples from the Hackensack registered mercury levels above 1 ppm in about 75 percent of the locations sampled, Ravit said. The highest reading was nearly 24 ppm, in mudflats opposite Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus, where many people kayak.

One sample registered mercury at 23.5 ppm, just south of the Bergen County Utilities Authority sewage treatment plant in Little Ferry. There was a reading of 20.7 near River Barge Park in Carlstadt, and 16.1 reading where the Berry’s Creek Canal empties into the Hackensack, just south of the Route 3 bridge.

Mercury levels in Berry's Creek, a six-mile tributary of the Hackensack that encircles MetLife Stadium, are among the highest ever recorded in a freshwater ecosystem in the United States, with levels up to 760 ppm.

Much of the contamination has come from three Superfund sites along the creek: the Ventron/Velsicol site in Wood-Ridge, where mercury was removed from discarded lab equipment, batteries and other devices; the Universal Oil Products site in East Rutherford; and the Scientific Chemical Processing site in Carlstadt, which was a waste-processing facility. The EPA oversees cleanups at each.

Microorganisms in the sediment, through a process called anaerobic respiration, take in mercury and release it as a more toxic form called methymercury, which allows it to get into the food chain and accumulate in far higher doses in the tissue of crabs and fish, said Tamar Barkay, a Rutgers expert on mercury.

These microorganisms are often found in the sediment of rivers like the Hackensack, she said.

The highest levels of any pollutants recorded in the Hackensack sediment were found at a sharp bend in the river where it squeezes between PSEG Power's energy plant in Jersey City, which used to burn coal, and the former Koppers Coke site in Kearny, which had made coke, a fuel derived from baking coal.

At that spot, fluoranthene was recorded at 110,000 parts per billion. Fluoranthene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, a group of chemicals formed when coal, oil and gas are burned and that can sometimes cause cancer, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry say. Though there is no specific cleanup standard for fluoranthene in sediment, the state does have an ecological screening criteria that indicates that it can start to impact fresh and saline water animal and plant life around 400 parts per billion.

In addition, just up the river from this spot lies the former Standard Chlorine Chemical Company's property, a Superfund site once used for chemical manufacturing. Operations at the site included the refinement of naphthalene to make various industrial products, and the manufacturing of lead-acid batteries and drain-cleaner products. The site was contaminated with dioxin, benzene, naphthalene, PCBs and volatile organic compounds.

At the sediment sampling spot just downstream from Standard Chlorine, naphthalene was recorded at 1.2 million parts per billion. Naphthalene, a likely human carcinogen, also can cause hemolytic anemia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and blood in the urine. The state's ecological screening criteria for naphthalene indicates it can start to affect animals and plants around 160 parts per billion.

Sediment samples along the river also contained PCBs, which can impair the human endocrine system and immune function and cause developmental abnormalities, reduced reproduction and increased mortality.

Political will

Bill Sheehan, of the Hackensack Riverkeeper environmental group, first petitioned the EPA in February 2015 to investigate whether the Hackensack should become a Superfund site.

“I’m really upset – here we’ve got the EPA to do the science, and it bears out what they already found in their initial literature search,” Sheehan said. “You’d think at this point we’d be moving forward, but with the current Trump administration I’m not going to be betting on that one too soon.”

Sheehan said a top EPA official for the region told him before President Barack Obama left office that the agency considered the Hackensack worthy of listing as a Superfund site, but the EPA would not move forward without concurrence from the DEP – and the state agency has not yet embraced the idea.

“So we’re back in a circular runaround,” Sheehan said. “It seems like we did a lot of work for nothing.” Getting the Hackensack cleaned up, he said, has “become a victim of politics.”

The DEP has discussed with the EPA several cleanup options. One would be to expand cleanup at existing contaminated sites along the river to portions of the riverbed itself.

But Sheehan said merely extending the existing Superfund sites to include the river would not be fair to the companies cleaning up the Superfund sites.

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“If we want to be fair, don’t saddle these few companies with the entire river cleanup,” he said. “That plays into the hands of people who want to get rid of the EPA and regulation. There are a much larger array of polluters affecting this stretch of the river.”

One challenge to cleaning the lower Hackensack is that it is tidal, so contamination dumped in one spot can be sloshed up and down the length of the river many times over, spreading the damage.

Parts of two other rivers in North Jersey, the Hudson and the Passaic, already have Superfund status. If the EPA were to add the Hackensack, the agency would conduct more studies to determine the extent of pollution and how best to clean it.

Cleanup could include dredging the most polluted sediment and capping less contaminated areas, similar to a nearly $1.4 billion cleanup plan the EPA has chosen for the lower Passaic.

The EPA also would try to identify companies and local governments responsible for the pollution. The agency's initial research found more than 900 sites that may be sources of contamination.