NEWARK — The Passaic River was once the backbone of an industrial corridor, snaking through this stretch of northern New Jersey and sustaining the factories and plants that cropped up alongside it. But now, the river’s banks are dotted by deserted manufacturing sites while the waterway remains scarred after decades as a dumping ground for industrial pollutants that linger in the water and have seeped into the soil.

These days in Newark, the Passaic, rather than serve as a draw, is something to be avoided, known by residents for the stench of its murky waters and the signs along the banks warning them not to eat the fish or the blue claw crabs they pull from it.

“Please understand that there should be yellow crime-scene tape around the Passaic River right now,” Senator Cory A. Booker, a Democrat and the former mayor of this city, said in a news conference on Friday. He lamented “the damage that has been done, the lives that have been affected, the disease that has been spread, the theft from opportunity” — costs he said were borne by the people of New Jersey.

On Friday, environmental officials announced that they had made final a plan to remove more than a century’s worth of industrial toxins from the lower eight miles of the Passaic, the most dangerously tainted ribbon of the river. The project, officials said, would be among the most ambitious and expensive cleanup efforts in the 35-year history of the federal Superfund program.