The lower Passaic River is among the nation’s most toxic waterways. Decades of chemical manufacturing and industrial pollution left the muck on the riverbed filled with substances harmful to human health. The sources of that pollution are largely gone today, but the toxic sediment has been waiting for remediation for more than 40 years.
Now that remediation work is the closest it’s ever been to beginning.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency last week announced a $125 million settlement with Environmental Resource Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum. If the settlement is approved by a federal judge, that money will pay for the construction of the facilities that will process dredged-up polluted material from the river for disposal. And the facilities are critical: Work in the river cannot begin until those facilities are built…