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Lincoln Park West [Jersey City] is an area badly in need of tidying up, said Fred Mumford, a spokesman for the DEP. Mumford explained that the wetlands on the edge of the park were used for decades as a dumping site for solid, liquid and hazardous waste. Invasive plants ran rampant in the wetlands, smothering natural growth and the water, he said.
In addition, the wildlife and plants in the 31-acre marsh have been contaminated by several oil spills in Newark Bay, such as the Exxon Bayway spill in the Kill Van Kull in 1990, which released 567,000 gallons of oil into Newark Bay and into the marshes.
Some $500,000 in remediation money from that and other polluters that went into the New Jersey Responsible Polluters fund provided the initial funding to clean up the wetlands.
While the Lincoln Park clean-up is still in its early stages - design drafts have just been drawn and Jersey City will seek bids for a contractor early next year - the plans are ambitious.
"We will be flushing tidal water into the creek system and building new tidal channels," said Carl Alderman of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is assisting with the clean-up. "We will be rebuilding a wetlands site that had previously been used as a landfill . removing landfill debris, planting salt grass."
Hudson County also has plans to revitalize the PJB landfill at the edge of Lincoln Park.