Five years after the Christie administration ordered scientists to remove oyster beds designed to clean pollution, the state Senate is poised this week to vote on a measure that could put the bivalves back into state waters.
The bill would effectively lift a 2010 ban by the state Department of Environmental Protection and allow environmental groups and academic researchers to grow oysters in the lower Hackensack River, Raritan Bay and other contaminated waterways again.
It is scheduled to be voted on Thursday. An identical bill has been approved by an Assembly committee but has not yet been scheduled for a full vote.
DEP officials have long opposed lifting the ban, saying contaminated oysters could wind up on someone’s dinner plate and could irreparably harm the state’s $790 million commercial shell-fishing industry, which is located mostly in cleaner southern waters. The DEP initiated the ban at a time when the agency was criticized by federal officials for failing to adequately patrol shellfish beds for poachers.
The ban affected two oyster reefs in Raritan Bay and the Hackensack River that scientists had hoped would decrease pollution because oysters naturally filter dirty water, removing heavy metals and other contaminants. Advocates have said their oysters are not attractive to poachers because they’re not big enough to be of commercial value, and are often submerged in plastic mesh bags attached to steel rods.
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