IV-470 



Great Kills Park was a man-made landfill, where garbage was dumped 

 as a fill. It was impossible to ascertain how much pollution could 

 be attributed to this fill operation. Only the statement by witnesses 

 that the landfill operation caused pollution of the adjacent water 

 is available. 



Raritan Bay covers roughly 90 square miles of which an estimated 

 5 percent was once harvested for shellfish. Thus, about 2,850 

 acres (A.S. Merrill) are suitable for shellfish. At the rate of 

 2,000 bushels of oysters on one acre (A.S. Merrill p. 334, 1967 

 Conference—Pollution of the Navigable waters of Eastern New 

 j erse y__ t November 1967 FWPCA) or 2,000 bushels of clams per acre 

 (Jerome, Chesmore and Anderson, 1967, "Study of Marine Resources 

 of Beverly-Salem Harbor, Page 49) combined with a dockside price 

 per bushel of $1.50, the loss per acre per year is $3,000. If 

 2,850 acres of the Bay were so utilized that total loss would amount 

 to $8.5 million annually. These figures will vary as follows: 



(1) 2,000 bushels per acre represents the upper limit 

 of current bottom harvest yields. Three dimensional 

 farming is already yielding over twice this amount per 

 acre. On the other hand, a more average bottom yield 

 would be on the order of a few hundred to 1,000 bushels 

 per acre. 



(2) The $1.50 figure is very low since a bushel of oysters 

 currently (1968) brings about $10.00 in the New England 



