Newark Bay Litigation

As described on our main litigation page, following its tour of Newark in 2003, the boundaries of the Passaic River Superfund site were expanded to include Newark Bay. This meant that the Bay would receive additional levels of environmental protection in the future.

In late 2004, GreenFaith, the Natural Resources Defense Council, NY/NJ Baykeeper and the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic filed suit against that Army Corps of Engineers, charging that the Corps had failed to plan its pending dredging of Newark Bay in a way that protected the environment from the reintroduction of dioxin from the floor of the Bay into the surrounding environment.

Since then, on two separate occasions, a Federal judge has found in favor of GreenFaith and its partners. The groups are currently negotiating with the Corps around improvements in its dredging plans.

The following two articles give a fuller sense of the substance and progress of the litigation:
June 2005: GreenFaith Joins Lawsuit to Clean Up Newark Bay: Follow-up from Environmental Justice Tour, Newark Advocacy
January 2006: GreenFaith, NRDC, NY/NJ Baykeeper Force Army Corps of Engineers to Revise Plans for New York/New Jersey Harbor Dredging Project

<< Back to Justice

"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,' motivate me to include the struggles against environmental racism and economic injustice in my lifelong commitment to social justice activism. No group of people should be forced to bear the disproportionate burdens of having incinerators, landfills, sewage treatment plants, oil refineries, and other polluters in their communities because of the color of their members’ skin or income level."
Read more about Valorie Caffee and her work