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Passaic River: once postcard perfect
(by Corey Klein - June 25, 2008)
Caviar and pearls are probably the last things one thinks of when facing the murky waters of the Passaic River. However, in the late 18th century, sturgeon, bottom-feeding fish that grew up to 18 feet long, swam up the Passaic River from Newark Bay to Paterson, according to Passaic River historian Nick Sunday. The sturgeon, which bore rich caviar, would have passed Arent Schuyler’s copper mines in what is now North Arlington, the Kingsland manor house in what is now Lyndhurst and Captain John Berry’s property, now Rutherford and East Rutherford.
The point of the river where the fish could not swim any further, the "head of tide," was located at the Great Falls in Paterson. It was there that the sturgeon laid their eggs, called roe, which were harvested for caviar.
Salmon joined the sturgeon on the upstream journey past present-day south Bergen, but fish were not the only aquatic delicacy in the Passaic River. In the Pearl Brook, also known as Third River, in Clifton, a main tributary into the Passaic, a freshwater pearl was found which made its way into the French Crown Jewels. It is not unlikely that freshwater clams in the Passaic River contained pearls as well, said Sunday.
During America’s infancy, the Passaic River might have been a "veritable aquarium," as Merritt Ierley writes in "A Place in History North Arlington, New Jersey: A Centennial Chronicle of the Birthplace of Steam Power in America," but the country’s economy was weak. "We were like a third world country. England was the powerhouse," said Sunday.
Industry leads to pollution
In 1791, founding father Alexander Hamilton wanted to create a model city to demonstrate America’s economic potential to investors. He set his sights on Paterson, the first industrial town in the United States of America. The Great Falls of the Passaic River in Paterson were harvested for their power and factories began springing up along the river into the City of Passaic.
Further downstream, in Garfield, the Dundee Dam was constructed to power the woolen industry in Passaic. The dyes from the factories, which contained toxic heavy metals, were spilled into the rivers, harming the sturgeon, clams and other marine life that once lived there.
During this period of industrialization, more farms, and more people, began to open up shop in southern Bergen County. "A big component of industry is people and people eat and people excrete waste," Sunday added.
The nitrous waste from people and animals provided nutrients for algae, which deprived the river of oxygen thereby suffocating the fish. A pipe once ran over the falls in Paterson to dyers on the other side who had no clean water.
During the 1940s, the north Jersey textile industry had largely moved westward, but the pollution continued. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Diamond Alkali Chemical Plant in Newark dumped dioxin, the cancer-causing byproduct of the controversial defoliant used in Vietnam Agent Orange and DDT, a pesticide banned by the government for its hazard to birds, into Newark Bay. Dioxin in the river has been found as far north as Garfield.
Renaissance
Sunday feels efforts to turn the river into a clean place of recreation are diminished by personal attitudes towards the river. "You look at the restaurants and recreation facilities, they don’t put them on the water. Everything is turned away from the river," he said.
Ella Filippone, executive director of the Passaic River Coalition, a non-profit organization concerned with protecting the water quality of the river, would disagree and has seen efforts to draw attention to the river and clean it up, but admits these efforts take time.
The coalition is also working on a program called "Don’t Trash the River," to spread awareness about dumping and a number of boating associations, such as the Nereid Boat Club in Rutherford, have been using the river for canoeing for years.
The coalition began in 1969 and saw the first park bench turned around to face the river in the 1980s. Since then, area towns have been consistently working with the coalition to put parks near the river, said Filippone. Lyndhurst has recently built a special needs park on the river and North Arlington has built a park on the river, which will sit alongside a boat launch for skimmer vessels which will clean debris from the river.
"There is a lot to be done yet, but you have to remember, this river was totally abandoned," said Filippone.
She pointed to successful cleanup efforts and renewed interest in the Hudson and Delaware rivers and believes attention from high-profile individuals could kick cleanup efforts into high gear. "They have the Harrimans and the Rockefellers and we have the Joneses and the Smiths," she said.
Congressman Bill Pascrell and U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, then a congressman, passed a Passaic River Restoration Initiative through Congress, which greatly increased the amount of money available for cleaning up the river.
The federal and state rules for water quality are very stringent and projects like the Route 46 bridge connecting Garfield and Clifton required two Dioxin tests at $10,000. "I just thought that was very prohibitive, but from a legal point of view, you have to do it," said Filippone.
Filippone said the federal government could begin to dredge Newark Bay and parts of the Passaic in Newark as soon as this year.
Dan Cashman, an entertainer who wrote "Voyages of the Passaic Falcon," a novel based on Passaic River history, said silt suspended at the bottom of the river is not conducive to wildlife, but believe the river has cleaned up immensely. "There are some fish in there. The crabs are starting to come back, but there’s still a lot of pollution out there that really keeps it from getting going," he said.
Sunday believes a general attitude of indifference toward the river has permeated the culture and children need to be instilled with a love for the river in order for it to come back. "Educate children that the river is something of great beauty to be cherished," he said.
Click here for a photo slideshow of the Passaic River's History
| Comments (1) |
On July 2, 2008, sharon said:
My father swam in the Passaic when he was a kid, he would be 88 now, so it wasen't really that long ago. I remember him telling me that there were beaches along the river. It would be nice to be able to just sit along the river now |
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