the creek mainstem and Berry's Creek Canal. The canal was built in 1911, and runs in a straight line through East Rutherford to the Hackensack River. The creek mainstem enters Rutherford and then forms the boundary between Rutherford and Lyndhurst until it reaches the Hackensack. Watershed The Berry's Creek watershed is , which includes of tidal waterways and marshes and of highly-developed upland areas. Within the watershed are many commercial and light industrial sites, portions of the sports complex, several closed landfills, and many roads and highways. Walden Marsh was built in the 1980s adjacent to the sports complex, as part of environmental mitigation for flood prevention measures that were installed. By 2000, 30 such structures existed along the Hackensack confluence. Pollution and remediation Berry’s Creek was subject to extensive industrial pollution during the 19th and 20th centuries. Ventron/Velsicol site F.W. Berk and Company, a chemical processing firm in Wood-Ridge and Carlstadt, discharged untreated waste, including mercury, into the creek between 1929 and 1960. In 1960 Berk sold its property to Wood Ridge Chemical Corporation, a subsidiary of Velsicol Chemical Corporation, and the waste discharges continued. In the 1960s the New Jersey Department of Health conducted tests of the plant effluent, although the principal focus at that time was conventional pollutants, for which there were well-established analytical testing methods. (Some wastewater samples were analyzed for mercury, however the results were negative due to the insensitivity of the test method employed.) In 1968 the plant was sold to Ventron, which continued operations, although the company also began to study the environmental impacts of its discharges. In 1970 the newly-established U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also began tests of the plant wastewater, and found there were daily discharges of two to four pounds of mercury into Berry's Creek. Neither the state nor EPA filed formal charges against the plant at that time. Plant operations ended in 1974, when Ventron sold the property to Robert M. Wolf, a real estate developer. In 1976, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP; successor to the Dept. of Health) filed a lawsuit against Ventron and other parties for violating the recently-enacted New Jersey Water Quality Improvement Act of 1971. The state enacted a new chemical spill law in 1977, the Spill Compensation and Control Act, and additional charges under this law were added to the lawsuit. In 1983 the New Jersey Supreme Court held that