Historical reconstruction of major pollutant levels in the Hudson-Raritan Basin: 1880-1980. Volume 1. Summary. Technical memo

The report is a summary of the results of a larger effort carried out by Variflex Corp. for Martin-Marietta Environmental Systems, Inc. under a grant from the Ocean Assessment Division of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA). The background research is described in volumes 2 and 3, on Heavy Metals and Fossil Fuels (HMFF) and Chemicals and Other Wastes (COW), respectively. The specific purpose of the present report is to reconstruct historical pollutant loadings in the Hudson-Raritan (H-R) basin from the material production and use data (as compiled in HMFF and COW) consistent with recent empirical evidence. The larger purpose of NOAA in commissioning the report is to provide input data for a statistical test of various hypotheses concerning the long-term relationships between commercial fish stocks and anthropogenic activities in estuarine water bodies. The analysis of fish stocks is the responsibility of MMES. As a test of the overall methodology, the pilot study has been focussed explicitly on the Hudson-Raritan basin.