The Slow-Moving Fight to Clean New Jersey’s Most Contaminated River – Inside Climate News

Isiah Cruz is alone on the banks of the Passaic River—in North Ironbound, just east of Newark, New Jersey—hacking away at a bundle of tall, leafy plants. It is a hot, muggy Sunday afternoon, hazy from Canadian wildfires.

He stands in a muddied mess of sludge thick with styrofoam, human waste and hundreds of discarded plastic bottles. Cruz seems completely unphased, though, fixated on his machete and the invasive plants he’s taking out. 

“The ecosystem is still alive here,” he said, then points across the river. “Also, we should acknowledge the birds over there”—a white heron perched on the opposite bank. 

Two of his partners, who live in the area and often assist in these maintenance days, couldn’t make it. Cruz shrugs it off.  

In the grand scheme of things, the small patch of greenery looks like a bit of a lost cause. The river is sickly brown. People actively toss in garbage by the minute. But here Cruz is, dedicated to restoring the waterfront’s native resilience. 

The Passaic River is a total of 80 miles long—winding and wrapping through Northern New Jersey, through complex tributaries and swampland and waterfalls, providing habitats for several species of birds and animals. Three major drinking water facilities draw from the river directly. In total, more than two million people drink from the Passaic.

But beneath the surface, 17 miles of it is full of hazardous amounts of dioxin, a highly toxic byproduct from manufacturing processes, mixing with other cancer-causing chemicals along the river’s bottom. Dioxin is a “forever chemical”—manufactured chemicals known to persist in the environment and in the body. 

The Passaic was coined one of America’s Most Endangered Rivers of 2025. It has also been listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site, highly contaminated by hazardous waste, for more than four decades. 

There has been some progress in the past five years—the company primarily responsible has drafted some plans for cleanup. There’s still a lot to do. The bottom half of the river, the area most polluted, still needs to be dredged—the toxic sediment in the waterbed pulled up, disposed of, then refilled. 

There’s a push from motivated locals, like Cruz, to keep momentum going. Cruz himself submitted the request to put the river on America’s Endangered River’s list. 

“The lower section is just a lot of work. It’s a big, expensive project,” Lia Mostropolo, director of clean water supply for the mid-Atlantic with the American Rivers Association, said. “But a ton of really good work has been going on. In the last 10 years that has been largely driven by local groups.”

The river’s history with toxic chemicals runs deep. The Passaic once housed a facility called the Diamond Alkali Company, which produced Agent Orange—a chemical herbicide used as a weapon in the Vietnam War in 1962. 

Dioxin and other chemicals were dumped frequently into the Passaic, permanently saturating the sediment and making it impossible for locals to swim, eat or play in the river. 

With movement on the legal front, activists have their hands tied by limited resources, making it hard to get work done and clear the area of toxic chemicals, permeating the sediments on the shore and in the fish and animals that now live there. Cruz currently operates on a grant-by-grant basis. 

The Diamond Alkali Company later became Diamond Shamrock Corporation, which later became Diamond Shamrock Chemicals Company, which was acquired by Oxy-Diamond Alkali Corporation and eventually became Occidental Chemical Corporation—currently known as OxyChem. While the EPA found the company responsible for the majority of damages, OxyChem still hasn’t paid all its dues. 

“Oxy’s responsibility is somewhere near 98 percent,” said Michele Langa, staff attorney at NY/NJ Baykeeper and co-chair of the Passaic River Community Advisory Group. “So they are in for the bulk of the cost. They have put up the most resistance to certain aspects just because they don’t necessarily feel like they should have to pay that much.” 

Things have been slow and held up in legal battles over the last several years.

On the river bank, Cruz hacks at the top half of the invasive common reed that has grown since his last visit. “We don’t have time to wait,” he said, then takes a shovel to the bottom halves, scooping out the root. Cruz decided to take action because he felt something needed to happen—now. 

Cruz grew up in Union City, New Jersey. He went to Yale for political science, spent a few months learning data science at Flatiron School in Manhattan, and eventually founded his own startup, Ama Earth Group, in 2024. The business uses AI to create Environmental Impact Assessments, which evaluate the environmental consequences of proposed development projects. He uses the money from that to fund these on-the-ground efforts. 

Since then, he’s done some additional restoration work in parts of Puerto Rico and Brazil.

Langa describes him as a passionate guy who’s “physically out there” and doing things to make the river better. The community, he said, has been receptive to his efforts, garnering small donations like $50 from the local mechanic. 

He’s using the money to plant native growth on the riverbank, combing through and restoring what’s been depleted. He has a method—to plant species like the broadleaf cattail, which he calls “aggressive.” They help fight the invasive ones creeping back in, like the common reed he’s battling in the sun. 

“Because we take out the invasives, you can actually walk and touch the water,” Cruz said. “You probably shouldn’t touch the water, but you can.” 

Cruz’s work is hands-on, but it’s unfolding alongside a sweeping legal effort to hold polluters accountable and restore the river at scale.

On March 2, 2023, the EPA issued a unilateral administrative order directing OxyChem to create the remedial design for the upper nine miles of the superfund site. The order, valued at $92.7 million, is the eighth largest UAO in the Superfund program history. Oxychem, reached for comment, directed inquiries to the EPA. 

Langa said the other 84 parties have been cooperative—paying their small share of the damages. Next: the project requires a dewatering facility, which squeezes out water from the sediment so it’s easier to dispose of. Then dredging can get started. Langa hopes that’ll be done in the next couple of years. 

She said the company keeps appealing settlements and dragging out proceedings and evading paying for the dewatering building itself, even if it paid for the planning. She calls these setbacks “roadblocks,” or rather, “speed bumps.”

As of 2022, the company’s response to the EPA states that OxyChem “cannot and will not perform all this work alone. Nor can OxyChem undertake to provide financial assurance at the outset for all estimated costs of implementing the entirety of both remedies.”

Regarding the EPA and federal support, Langa said there’s been some tension about changes the current administration could make, though nothing has stopped the project yet. Still, the future of the EPA and its role in Superfund sites is uncertain. The Trump Administration just released its fiscal budget for 2026 in early May, which includes a $254 million reduction in the Superfund program.

“I get the sense that everybody’s just trying to do their work and keep their heads down,” Langa said. If funding is cut, that means projects could be cut and positions could be cut. The result, for everyone, could be devastating. 

At best, progress could stall for the Passaic. At worst, it disappears altogether. The river data is only really good for about five to eight years, Langa said, so if things stall too long, then the EPA would need to conduct the study again to assess if numbers are correct and accurate. Otherwise the risk is implementing a plan that no longer applies. Essentially, the plan would run in a circle. 

She likens the effect to a Jenga tower. “You pull out one wrong block and the whole thing crumbles,” Langa said. 

The river has been unusable for decades. People can’t swim in it or fish. Langa said she suspects it will be another decade until locals see the beginnings of a healthier Passaic. And that’s without any future disruptions. The process, she said, takes a lot of time with bureaucratic red tape, and people are getting burned out. 

Eventually Cruz hopes to team up with researchers to pilot a new type of remediation, using mycelium or fungus, to clean up the dioxin in the riverbanks as a way to try and mitigate dredging, which can be harmful to the surrounding ecology. 

But for now, Cruz and local nonprofits are working on the small wins and envisioning them becoming bigger ones. 

“There’s like ten native plants that grew,” he said, smiling. That’s a good thing. The nonnatives will have a harder time returning and it’ll encourage more pollinators. 

It would be easy to view the river as a stagnant, lost cause. Not Cruz. And he wants to do things the right way. That’s why we’re hacking down plants and not spraying them with weed killer. It’s why he shows up to the site every time he visits home. 

Ecological restoration is important to Cruz because native plants can support other species living there and bring back what he calls “the former tenants” of the river— like otters and birds. 

“You know, you could come in here with chemicals and tractors and stuff, but we’re doing it pretty manual,” Cruz said, packing up his tools. “That’s intentional.”

When he finishes for the day, he is sweaty and exhausted from the thick humidity and wildfire smoke. The river is now visible from the walking trail nearby. A local peeks in and asks about the action going on. 

Cruz, in his kind and inviting manner, speaks excitedly to him in Spanish. He gestures to the plants and laughs—he’s explaining his project and why he’s here holding a machete. 

The man, who can’t be over 40, nods his head, asks some questions, and eventually inquires about: “¿un papel?” 

Cruz scribbles his name and contact information on a piece of paper and hands it to him. The man smiles at it and waves goodbye. 

“That was awesome,” Cruz said.