NJT drawbridges

ryanov wrote:Diamond Shamrock I believe is the company responsible for the one west of there, nearish to HUDSON/KEARNY (that area with the white wall at the edge of the river that up until recently had planters with trees in them on it and now has a lot of activity). If I'm not mistaken, a major court case was won recently, leading to a lot of the cleanup activity.

if i recall correctly the diamond shamrock site (with the white wall and the purdy concrete planters) is the source for the dioxin in the bay related to agent orange manufacturing.

NJ has the most superfund sites of any state. (and MANY more contaminated sites that don't wind up on the superfund list because someone agrees to the cleanup before it gets that far.)

Jtgshu wrote:

ryanov wrote:More info on the aforementioned river cleanup: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Pa ... 47666.html

Interesting...thanks for the link

I did a huge report on the Diamond Shamrock site for an Environmental Sciences class when in college. To say I was horrified when doing that research is an understatement.

The most shocking thing to me was they would send low level labor out in the middle of the night in a little boat with rakes when the sediment would start to pile up and risk being seen when it broke the surface by authorities.

The Newark LIbrary has an amazing amount of info about the history of this site. And to think before I did that research (back when you actually had to go to a library and look through PAPER books!...I guess im showing my age...hahaha) I thought all those containers there were empty and just being stored there til needed. Little did I know they contained the former plant as the debris was too contaminated to dispose of....

The thing is much of what went on was perfectly legal. (not sure if that makes it better or worse) There weren't the rules in place we have today. RCRA (the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act where "Hazardous Waste" was defined and the rules set in place for the minimum disposal requirements came into effect only in ~1976. Before that you could basically do as you please with many things. As an example- Kin-Buc landfill on the Raritan river was a garbage dump for many years. The story goes that the owners saw the writing on the wall when RCRA was on the way and actually expanded the dump and took in more and nastier stuff leading up to the date that RCRA would prohibit it. "(some of)it was legal" when they did it but that became a superfund site pretty early on after the superfund act came along.

Even in the modern era post RCRA there were some things that were OK to put in a landfill that later on were not. I'm not certain if the Dioxin dirt was every allowed to be landfilled legally under RCRA but i wouldn't surprise me if in 1976,77... it would have been legal to bury it in a landfill. For the longest time those containers have sat all "packaged up" waiting for a solution at Diamond Shamrock .

Sometimes the science is slow, other times people deny the science. Either way stuff that "was legal" winds up needing to be cleaned up years later....

That's why many pre-1980 landfills are now classified as "hazardous waste" or "Superfund" sites, even though such waste was considered "non-hazardous" or "non-regulated" back then.

At one point, swimming was possible at the base of my street on the Passaic River in Rutherford. The Hackensack is in much better shape than it used to be (the Riverkeeper gives nature tours that are interesting if you're ever looking for something to do), though I doubt one would swim in it. Perhaps one day the Passaic will end up there as well. Small steps.

The area by Portal appears to no longer be seeing much attention.

Something important to take notice of -- especially as folks on here bemoan the speed and cost of environmental impact studies, etc. like they serve no purpose -- there are efforts underway to allow the DEP to waive its rules, presumably when economically expedient. Let's not forget how we got here: http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf/s ... a14f808896

Excuse the preachy/only-tangentially-related-to-drawbridges post, but this is my backyard we're talking about.

Swimming?? Did you come out with a third eye after the dip??

Should have said "at one point in the distant past," not in my 30 years on earth. From a 1984 report (found here):

US Government Printing Office wrote:Resources and Recreation - The Passaic River

Despite the growth of industry in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the land on the Passaic River retained most of its country
landscape and served as a recreation ground for the area. The Passaic
was particularly attractive to fishermen, who caught shad, eel and
sturgeon, and gathered mussels, (One history records that a 7-foot,
500 pound sturgeon was caught off the shores of Lyndhurst.)

"Bass, perch, trout, carp and other fresh water fish were in
abundance as well as fresh water-mussels and eels. Shad by the
thousands ran up the river to spawn. Farmers from far away
came to the river with barrels and salt to buy and clean fish,
pack them in barrels and cart them home for consumption and sale.

"The river 100 years ago was a delight to swim in. Bathing
beaches were abundant and popular with rowboats and canoes avail-
able for rental."

The beaches along the river were popular meeting places for the
fun lovers in Wallington. There were perhaps three beaches, one
located about 500 feet north of the Acquackanmonk (Gregory Avenue)
Bridge that faced west, and another along Hatheway Street that faced
east. The third and probably the prettiest was at the intersection
of the Passaic and Saddle Rivers. Most long-time residents would
agree that the rivers were clean, full of fish and a source of enjoy-
ment and recreation. The Roaring Twenties were a prime period for
river recreation.

One of the most detrimental events concerning the natural Passaic
River took place in the late fifties. The course of the river was
changed to provide an aligh-ment for Route 21, through Passaic County.
As a result, Wallington gave up an entire street (once Scott Street)
and several families were relocated. The river is now bordered by
concrete embankmnents to the Market Street Bridge.

Industrial pollution gradually destroyed both the fishing and
boating by the end of the nineteenth century. Both activities did
see a brief revival during the 1920's. In the 1930's, the Army Corps
of Engineers deepened the Passaic River channel and put the dredged
spoils along the shores. The boating clubs went out of business, many
of their facilities being converted to commercial uses and eventually
lost.

ryanov wrote:At one point, swimming was possible at the base of my street on the Passaic River in Rutherford. The Hackensack is in much better shape than it used to be (the Riverkeeper gives nature tours that are interesting if you're ever looking for something to do), though I doubt one would swim in it. Perhaps one day the Passaic will end up there as well. Small steps.

The area by Portal appears to no longer be seeing much attention.

Something important to take notice of -- especially as folks on here bemoan the speed and cost of environmental impact studies, etc. like they serve no purpose -- there are efforts underway to allow the DEP to waive its rules, presumably when economically expedient. Let's not forget how we got here: http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf/s ... a14f808896

Excuse the preachy/only-tangentially-related-to-drawbridges post, but this is my backyard we're talking about.

The waiver rules don't hinge on economics (I think there is a hardship provision but that basically is something like a business would go bankrupt to comply. NJT isn't going to go bankrupt jumping through hoops for say the cutoff). There's a really specific group of instances when things can be waived. Also those are only NJ DEP regulations. NJ has no say over federal EPA rules.

The area around portal isn't fully cleaned up yet. (Honestly not sure if it all ever will be "clean" - there's different tiers of how much they bother depending on many factors) .

And yep r36- a surprising amount of municipal landfills are on the superfund list. (And many others have or will be remediated by big pocketed customers who used the landfills legally at the timeso they won't show up on Superfund list.
Larger big pocketed company's landfill NOTHING today for fear of getting a cleanup bill years down the road even though it might be legal today.

What's scariest though is that residential is still not regulated and people still throw god only knows what in their regular trash. Things that would be jailtime for a commercial site is totally legal and people dont realize how bad things are when million's of peoples bad habits add up.

Has there been any work recently on upgrading the drawbridges at Shark (NJCL) and the Upper Hack (Main Line)? An interesting tidbit - NJ Transit in their website describing capital projects claims that the original Upper Hack db was build by the Lackawanna in 1958 - if this is true, it's not all that old a bridge.

Andy
Jacksonville, FL

Yes, Upper Hack lift was built new in 1958 and opened in March 1959 to replace a dated 1901 double track swing span on the (then) Lackawanna Boonton Line.

How old is the current Passaic River Bridge on the M&E line? It seems to me that it is a replacement to an older bridge with 3 tracks -- there are 3 tracks on both sides of the current 2 track bridge.

EuroStar wrote:How old is the current Passaic River Bridge on the M&E line? It seems to me that it is a replacement to an older bridge with 3 tracks -- there are 3 tracks on both sides of the current 2 track bridge.

It opened in 1903.

Back in the 1950's when I lived near the E-L Passaic Park station, there still was some river traffic, usually fuel barges to a depot just south of the Gregory Av. bridge in Wallington. The bridge tender for the Erie Main Line bridge between Passaic and Rutherford did his/her best to keep the trains on time. There were several times when the tug blew its whistle to ask the bridge tender to open the bridge, but the tender waited until a scheduled train crossed--sometimes, most of the barge would already be under the bridge before the tender opened it.

I seem to recall that bridge tenders on the E-L at some bridges were also operators; the controlled signals and derails at the bridges. Is this correct?

EuroStar wrote:How old is the current Passaic River Bridge on the M&E line? It seems to me that it is a replacement to an older bridge with 3 tracks -- there are 3 tracks on both sides of the current 2 track bridge.

I believe the original swing bridge was also two tracks, see the support structures still present adjacent to the current bridge: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 01635&z=20