Newark, NJ – A new vessel to remove floating trash and debris from the Passaic River, its tributaries and the Newark Bay was launched this week by the Newark-based Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC) as part of the agency’s River Restoration Program.

The new, state-of-the-art Aquarius System Trash Hunter-34 Skimmer, which features a 50-foot-long, 13-foot-wide, 27,500-pound vessel with twin catamaran hulls and a water jet propulsion system, will be put through rigorous river trials over the next several weeks and will be commissioned and named in early spring.

The vessel will be used in tandem with the SV Newark Bay--the agency's first Skimmer vessel-- and will travel up and down the lower Passaic, its tributaries and Newark Bay, collecting debris and trash on its conveyor belts. The materials will be stored onboard and then offloaded at a dock in North Arlington or at PVSC’s plant in Newark before being disposed of at a landfill.

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The Lower Passaic River has been subjected to significant pollution for many years, with two centuries of industrial dumping by numerous public and private entities. Many of those entities are no longer in existence.

PVSC pioneered its River Restoration Program in 1998 and has removed more than 12,000 tons of debris from more than 100 miles of area waterways.

“This new Skimmer Vessel is a big investment by PVSC to reclaim our waterways,” PVSC Chairman Thomas Tucci, Jr. said. “It will help us pull even more debris out of the water as we continue to improve the health of the environment and make our waterways more inviting and appealing for everyone.”

PVSC operates one of the country's oldest and largest treatment plants for the wastewaters of northern New Jersey, serving nearly 1.5 million people in parts of five counties.