The Raritan River runs through the center of New Jersey, with upper reaches that are incredibly beautiful, providing a valuable source of water for more than a million people. But industry took hold of the lower Raritan early on and left its mark. This one-hour documentary, narrated by actor Avery Brooks, tells the compelling story of a river that has been profoundly contaminated over 200 years and of the extraordinary efforts to clean it up. It reveals how government agencies, powerful corporations, environmentalists, developers, scientists and lawyers have all clashed in their attempts to deal with the aftermath of extensive pollution and environmental neglect. Viewers will get a real sense of why it is so difficult to restore our rivers once they have been seriously contaminated. Four particular sites along the river are examined in detail, an early Superfund Site called the Kin Buc Landfill, the Horseshoe Road Superfund site, a former National Lead site about to become one the nations largest brown field redevelopments and a recently listed Superfund site at Laurence Harbor.
