LYNDHURST, N.J. -- Just 5 miles from Manhattan, the New Jersey Meadowlands are famous as the home of New York's two pro football teams, a venue for hockey and basketball, and Bruce Springsteen stadium concerts.
They're also infamous for toxic pollution and several sprawling dumps that destroyed tidal wetlands that some have compared to the Florida Everglades and cemented New Jersey's reputation as an industrial wasteland.
But there is a chance that the Meadowlands may yet be famous for a near-miraculous ecological revival.
The marshes here are rebounding. And the Meadowlands' liquid heart, the Hackensack River -- long treated as little more than an open sewer -- is stirring again with aquatic life.
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| Map courtesy of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. |
Populations of tiny worms and crustaceans on the river bottom are growing dramatically, attracting a wider variety of fish species to feed on them, new studies show. Numbers of nesting and migrating waterfowl have never been higher, luring birders. And now Rutgers University researchers are experimenting with oysters in hopes that they might filter pollutants from the water and build reefs that will support a wide range of aquatic animals.
The recovery of the river and the marshes is due, in part, to the 1972 Clean Water Act, which stopped communities from dumping untreated sewage and other wastes, and to the efforts of the ecosystem's guardian, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC), a unique, quasi-government agency that will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year.
"There's no question that the Hackensack River has gotten better," said Robert Ceberio, the commission's executive director. "There's a progression that we can prove empirically."
The commission is an independent state agency with a contradictory mandate. It is supposed to protect ecologically sensitive areas, but it must also facilitate development and provide space for continued solid-waste disposal, a nod to the 14 cities in its jurisdiction.
It is a delicate balance, but most say it seems to be working.
New Jersey may seem an unlikely source of environmental inspiration, but the story of how the commission turned a city-sized trash heap into an emerging birding and fishing center in the shadow of Manhattan offers a dramatic case study for rehabilitating landfills and their surrounding environs. It is also a story about the evolution of American attitudes toward wetlands and the environment.
That the Meadowlands survived in any form at all is itself a small miracle.
Sandwiched between Manhattan and the most crowded corner of New Jersey, the most densely populated state, the Meadowlands' more than 30 square miles of wetlands have long been a magnet for trash and trouble.
People have long considered the Meadowlands a "sort of a wasteland, and obstacle to be reclaimed," said Brett Bragin, a senior naturalist with the Meadowlands Commission. Having failed in repeated attempts to wring some economic value from the swamp, communities in northeastern New Jersey eventually came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to drain it all.
In 1896, C.C. Vermeule, a consulting engineer for the Geological Survey of New Jersey, prepared plans for draining all wetlands abutting the Hackensack River. He proposed a series of dikes and ditches to divert the waters to Newark Bay and free the land for reclamation. He envisioned the whole of the Meadowlands paved with roads and warehouses, with whatever remained of the river serving as a superhighway for commerce.
"It was his plan to show how these meadows could be reclaimed, because obviously they were worthless, they were an eyesore, they did nothing but breed pestilential mosquitoes and bad smells," Bragin explained. "If Vermeule had his way, all these lands would have been ditched, they would have been drained, they would have been filled."
Vermeule's plan was too expensive for the locals to complete. Some parts of the Meadowlands were drained in the early part of the 1900s, largely along his designs. And large swaths of wetlands were completely reclaimed by Newark and other cities on the south end of the Meadowlands to allow those cities room to grow. But the Meadowlands refused to die, with the poor soil and storms conspiring to destroy many early dikes and allow water to return to drained areas.
So city planners hatched a new strategy: Fill the swamps with trash and build on top of the reclaimed land.
Thus began the most notorious episode in the Meadowlands' saga. Eight giant landfills covering more than 2,000 acres were established on its fringes, and both legal and illegal dumpers gradually worked their way over the wetlands and toward the Hackensack River.
In their heyday, the Meadowlands' dumping grounds were taking in 70,000 tons of trash a week, about 42 percent of all New Jersey garbage. Wetlands and waterways were destroyed, and people and wildlife fled.
The situation got so bad that the state intervened, with the legislature in 1968 drafting the law that created the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, then called the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission. The commission got to work in 1969.
Ceberio remembers those days well, since he was with the commission when it set up shop right at the foot of the Kingsland Landfill.
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| With the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop, this kayaker glides across the Hackensack River watershed. The area is now emerging as a popular spot for urban ecotourism. Photo courtesy of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. |
"It was horrible," Ceberio said, recalling the 1,200 to 1,500 garbage trucks that rumbled right by commission offices daily. "On a very windy day, you would have garbage flowing out into this impoundment. You would have ... probably several thousand gulls every single day that love to eat fresh garbage. And God help you if the gulls took off while you were going to your car."
But establishing commission headquarters in the thick of the mess was the most dramatic way to signal "enough" to politicians and companies. Commission officials called it the "line in the sand" moment.
The new agency still had to strike a balance between conservation and the demands of the United States' largest urban area. The government gave it tremendous zoning authority over the 30 square miles in its jurisdiction but ordered it to help the surrounding 14 communities dispose of their solid waste and grow their economies. Its staff includes not only naturalists and conservation officials, but also project engineers, transportation experts and development planners.
The commission made many enemies in its early days, riding roughshod over mayors and city councils to get things done. Ceberio regrets the way the agency did business, but he concedes it is hard to argue with results.
From the 1970s on, the commission worked to shut down the landfills -- many of which Ceberio described as "orphans" because no one had assumed responsibility for what happened to them once dumping ended -- one by one. It has spent millions putting in environmental controls, capping closed landfills with clay and surrounding them with barrier walls and equipment to catch the leachate, the toxic juice that seeped from the mountains of garbage into the Hackensack River.
Of the eight original Meadowlands landfills, only one is active today, and even that one is slated to close at the end of this year. The volume of activity is way down, with about 3,500 tons a week hauled in, down from 70,000 tons. No household trash is accepted.
But in keeping with its mandate, in January, the commission will reopen a landfill to provide room for dumping. This is important, officials say, because the very same landfills that the commission is determined to close are also moneymakers for the agency.
In 1992, the state cut the commission loose, ending all direct funding. So for 16 years, the agency has had to generate its own funds, earning money primarily through property sales and solid waste management -- but now it is diversifying its revenues.
Renewable energy figures into the commission's plans.
Capitalizing on its landfills, the commission in 1987 installed equipment to capture landfill methane, using some to generate power and selling the rest to the state's largest utility to mix with natural gas supplies.
The agency is also installing solar panels on landfill slopes, with the idea of slashing its electricity bills and sending energy out to the rest to the grid. A 10-megawatt solar array in the works for the south slope of a landfill will eventually be one of the largest in the country.
There are other visible signs of the commission's environmental credentials.
The $12 million campus it built at the foot of a now closed landfill includes Richard W. DeKorte Park, a nature center with boardwalks that jut into the wetlands so visitors can see birds and aquatic life.
The commission has established a separate Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute (MERI) to conduct ecological studies. It also recently opened the Center for Environmental and Scientific Education, a set of classrooms and labs built to the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.
Decades of draining, reclamation and dumping have taken a heavy toll on the Meadowlands.
Where more than 20,000 acres of vibrant swamps once existed, only 8,400 acres remain. But this small surviving portion of the Hackensack River watershed seems to have turned a corner in the last few years. Ironically, an area once considered an environmental wasteland is now emerging as a popular spot for urban ecotourism.
As heavy metals have been flushed out of the river bottom or covered with new sediment, populations of small benthic organisms are spiking. Scientists estimate that some 65 to 70 species of fish now live in the Meadowlands.
Commuters traveling to New York City routinely see egrets and herons alongside the railroad tracks. Ospreys, hawks and bald eagles are now frequent visitors. Harbor seals were even spotted last winter feeding in river's mouth. About 260 different bird species have been seen, many of which are on the federal government's endangered species list.
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| Herons are now frequent visitors to the Meadowlands thanks to a spike in the fish population. Photo courtesy of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. |
"This is the only open space in an area that has basically been nuked by development all around it," providing an important oasis for migratory flocks, said Bragin. "Every upland parcel has practically been used."
Lilo Stainton, the commission's communications director, said activities run by the agency's educational arm for schools have proved so popular that it is now expanding its offerings. The new curriculum includes survival camps and canoe safety courses.
People on both sides of the estuary can take self-guided canoe and kayak tours through the waterways. And the commission is setting up public marinas so boaters and jet skiers can enjoy the Hackensack River.
Fishing in the Meadowlands is also increasingly popular, though it is entirely catch-and-release, as officials warn against eating the fish. Stripped bass measuring 3 feet long are now routinely caught. There are even rumors of entrepreneurs setting themselves up as fishing guides, charging Manhattanites to take them out on the river. All of this against a backdrop of New York's skyscrapers.
There are countless reminders that the area is not pristine.
Waterfowl are often seen perched on old tires. And the fresh water that does exist won't be potable for a long time, if ever.
Most of the original vegetation has been choked out by phragmites, an invasive reed that thrives in brackish water. And on most days, commuters changing trains at Secaucus Junction, which sits in the middle of the Meadowlands, are greeted with a sticky, sour stench wafting in from a nearby dump.
Progress toward environmental cleanup and redevelopment in some areas often parallels roadblocks in others.
Last month, the commission finally pulled the plug on a scheme by EnCap Golf Holdings, an investment group with backing by Donald Trump's organization, to build golf courses and luxury condos atop old waste sites. The commission concluded that the investors had neither the funds nor the expertise to see the project through.
But what success the agency has achieved shows that landfills, no matter where they are established, need not leave a permanent Chernobyl-like impact on the surrounding ecology. The lesson for others wondering how to manage a mountain of trash once the dumping stops, said Ceberio, is to find opportunities in even the most horrible of situations.
"You can sit and say, 'Oh, the atrocities of the past,'" he said, "or you can say, 'OK, how do I now address those atrocities today and what I can do with them?'"
Click here to see images and reports from the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.
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