New Jersey Resorts to Elbow Grease to Clean Its Shoreline

Garbed in bright orange jumpsuits, oversized yellow galoshes, rubber gloves up to their elbows and powder-blue hard hats, prisoners from New Jersey’s Mountain View Prison were out scouring the shore of Newark Bay one recent morning.

Under the watchful eyes of guards and environmental officials, the 40 prisoners picked up driftwood and debris that clung to the shoreline like grime on a seldom-scrubbed bathtub.

Most of what they gathered was everyday trash: pop bottles, beer cans, foam cups, detergent containers, potato chip wrappers and other detritus of a disposable society.

There were no syringes, bandages or bloody vials--wastes of the type that kept swimmers away from more inviting stretches of the Jersey shore last summer.

“No needles today,” said Joseph Williams, 24, of Jersey City, who is serving nine months for drug possession. “I hope they are gone. I hope it’s going to be different this summer. A lot of people didn’t get to go anywhere last summer.”

Bill Honachefsky, a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection official leading the “Operation Clean Shores” project, said: “Some of this material has been here for 75 years. We’re not going to cure it in one year, but this is going to make a difference.”

Part of the trash on Jersey’s shore floats out of New York City from sewers that overflow whenever there is a heavy rain.

In Bayonne, at the bottom end of a peninsula that stretches almost to Staten Island, residents blame the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, where they say trash routinely spills from barges.

In addition, overflows from sewage treatment plants and ocean dumping add to the solids, called “floatables,” in the waters around New York. Some of this inevitably finds its way to New Jersey’s 127 miles of oceanfront, particularly during full moons or after storms, when tides run high.

State and federal officials are planning to step up efforts to snare the solid waste before it washes up anywhere. Three Army Corps of Engineers vessels that patrol for driftwood around New York will be equipped with nets to pick up garbage.