"Legacy” mercury pollution from decades ago and miles away is an important source of contamination in New Jersey Meadowlands waterways, according to a Rutgers-led study that could help guide cleanup efforts.
The study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials identified upper Berry’s Creek and its tributary, Peach Island Creek, in Bergen County, as major sources of mercury found throughout the Meadowlands coastal ecosystem. The two creeks are part of a Superfund site slated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a $332 million cleanup.
The researchers examined the degree to which old mercury contamination has been redistributed throughout the Hackensack River, the main waterway in Meadowlands, and the degree to which legacy pollution outweighs the mercury that may arrive from the atmosphere or other sources. Mercury, a toxic metal, causes neurological effects in wildlife and people.
“Our results will be useful to environmental managers at state and federal agencies overseeing cleanup efforts,” said lead author John Reinfelder, a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “They are wrestling with deciding how much of the Meadowlands’ tidal waterways require remediation and the benchmark for how clean they need to be.”
Read more at: Rutgers University
Bellman's Creek in Ridgefield, New Jersey, is one of many tidal tributaries of the Hackensack River estuary, the main waterway in the New Je