Garbage mars the shore of the Passaic River in Newark. (Dave Sanders for The New York Times)

— For generations, it served as an engine of northern New Jersey’s industrial corridor. And for generations, it was polluted by the factories along its banks, which dumped chemicals, heavy metals and pesticides into increasingly murky water. “New Jersey’s biggest crime scene,” U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), the former mayor of Newark, has called it.

These days, the Passaic River is a noxious mess that floats dead fish and trash. Signs warning “Danger!” tell people not to eat the carcinogenic fish and crabs that come from it.

“Most people who live and grew up in Newark don’t really remember a time when they could interact with the river,” said Ana Baptista, a local activist and environmental policy professor who grew up in the nearby Ironbound neighborhood. “Instead of it being a natural resource, it has turned into a blight.”

But after decades of inaction, what could become the largest, most complex Superfund cleanup in history aims to undo the worst of the damage.

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The Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized a $1.4 billion plan to remove industrial toxins that have built up for more than a century along the Passaic’s lower eight miles. That stretch would be dredged from bank to bank, with more than 3.5 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment removed and a two-foot-thick sand and stone barrier laid to “cap” the river bottom.

“If it’s done right and works as planned, it will greatly reduce the risk that’s posed by these toxins that are in the sediment,” said Kirk Barrett, an engineering professor at Manhattan College and former director of the Passaic River Institute at Montclair State University.

It is not a done deal quite yet, however. Federal officials still are negotiating with a group of roughly 100 companies most responsible for the pollution — including household names such as Honeywell, Pfizer and Sherwin-Williams — about individual financial obligations. The group has fought large-scale dredging, pushing instead for targeted removal in the dirtiest areas of the river.

Separately, regulators also are talking with the company that owns the former Diamond Alkali facility, where the herbicide Agent Orange and pesticides were produced during the 1960s. Their legacy is dioxin, a highly toxic carcinogen found in the Passaic in high concentrations.

“We are hoping for cooperation from the parties and, in fact, [are] counting on it,” said Judith Enck, the EPA’s regional administrator, who noted that the agency has enforcement authority if the companies balk.

After those negotiations end, the designs and actual dredging could take a decade, if not longer. The tainted sediment would be shipped to an approved disposal site. Left untouched would be other parts of the river’s 17-mile lower stretch, which would remain polluted and beset by other problems, such as sewage overflows.

But the fact that the Passaic cleanup could be happening at all is a significant step.

Warnings are posted along the Passaic River. “Danger! Do not catch!” this sign says in Spanish. “Do not eat! Blue claw crabs in Newark Bay complex may cause cancer and may harm brain development in unborn and young children.” (Brady Dennis/The Washington Post)

“There have been 200 years of industrial activities along the river, and for most of the time, that was very poorly regulated,” Barrett said.

Environmental organizations and local activists have largely ­embraced the EPA’s plan, including those in the Ironbound community. Residents there have endured a litany of environmental troubles, including polluted air and soil and being surrounded by highways, train tracks and air traffic.

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The optimists envision a river that “people can swim in, boat in, fish in — a river that’s part of our daily life,” said Cynthia Mellon, an environmental justice organizer at the grass-roots Ironbound Community Corporation.

Not everyone is confident that will happen. Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said the EPA should have chosen a more expensive, more ambitious approach that would have involved much deeper dredging to remove toxic sediments.

“The main issue for us is that a cap won’t work,” given the shifting tides and storm surges in and out of the Passaic, he said. “It’s not going to last.”

Tittel criticizes the agency’s approach as one of political convenience that will allow regulators to tout a cleanup but that will avoid fully restoring the river. “It seems to me that EPA decided to take the course of least resistance,” he said. “They took the expedient route. The community is still going to suffer. . . . And the polluters are still not being required to clean up the mess they made.”

Enck disagrees, saying the EPA’s plan is based on years of study and sound science and “is totally driven by what’s best for the river.”

“My goal is to clean up this incredible water body so it can be fully used by the residents of New Jersey,” she said. “Right now, it’s the butt of jokes.”

Not to mention a target of skepticism and scorn.

“We don’t even think about the water,” said Sergio Dacumha, who lives along a street of clapboard rowhouses a couple of blocks from the Passaic. His family drives two hours to the Pocono Mountains when they want to fish. “Everybody understands by now to stay away from the river.”

Enck said she and others who have worked to push the cleanup forward are intent on changing that, even if it takes decades.

“This is a tremendous natural resource that essentially has been off-limits to the public because of years and years of gross pollution by companies that should have known better,” she said. “We have to do this project. . . . It is long overdue.”