Citation:

Impact/Purpose:

How will it be used? This joint CERCLA-WRDA study is in a highly industrialized urban river with a complex sediment transport regime (tidal estuary system) and involves risk assessment considering bioaccumulative chemicals such as 2,3,7,8-TCDD (and other dioxin congeners) and PCBs as well as metals, other organics, and petroleum hydrocarbons. Peer review will be necessary to support the Agency s risk management decision, which will involve highly complex models.

Description:

EPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) ), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) are conducting a joint study of the Lower Passaic River, the 17-mile tidal portion of the river from Dundee Dam to Newark Bay. The study will fulfill the requirements of an RI/FS under CERCLA for EPA and a Feasibility Study under the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) for the Corps and NJDOT, as well as provide information for NOAA, USFWS and NJDEP’s Natural Resource Damage (NRD) Assessment. For EPA, the Lower Passaic River Restoration Project is an expansion of a six-mile study of the Passaic River that was designated a second operable unit of the Diamond Alkali Superfund Site, a former herbicide (Agent Orange) and pesticide manufacturing facility. Work on an RI/FS that had been started by a PRP pursuant to a 1994 AOC was suspended by EPA in 2001. Sediment, water, and biota sampling that had been completed prior to 2001 demonstrated extensive contamination of fish, invertebrates, and sediment with high levels of dioxin, PCBs, and metals, as well as other contaminants along the entire 17 miles of the Passaic River. Therefore, EPA decided to expand the 6-mile study to a 17-mile study, and to collaborate with the Corps and NJDOT, in order to ensure that government resources are expended in a cost-effective manner and to solve the contamination problem using a watershed approach. A May 2007 AOC between EPA and a group of 73 PRPs turned the work on the RI/FS over to the PRPs with EPA oversight. Peer review of the human health and ecological risk assessment, which includes water quality, sediment transport, chemical fate and transport and biota modeling will be necessary due to the highly complex tidal hydrologic regime (the Passaic River is part of the larger New York - New Jersey Harbor Estuary System), the presence of a large number of upland sources of contaminants in addition to the Diamond Alkali facility and the presence of numerous contaminants including, but not limited to, dioxin, PCBs and mercury in the sediments. During the course of the 17-mile study, the sediments of the lower eight miles of the river were identified as the major on-going source of dioxins and other contaminants to the rest of the river and Newark Bay. EPA is evaluating taking an Early Action on that source by developing a Focused Feasibility Study (FFS). The main decision-making tool in the FFS is the Conceptual Site Model-Empirical Mass Balance (CSM-EMB). That CSM-EMB was submitted for external peer review in June 2008. Additional modeling work is being conducted to address the peer reviewers’ comments.

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