Dye tracing turned a Bergen County brook bright green

“Who had ‘radioactive river’ on the Garfield bingo board?” asked one Garfield resident on Facebook on Wednesday morning alongside a photo of an unnaturally green body of water. This post in the Garfield Deserves Better Facebook group stirred up a conversation with several residents, all wondering why the Fleischer Brook near Price Rite on Outwater Lane was bright green.

“The city should be calling the DEP and county on this problem,” said one commenter.

“This does not look good at all,” wrote another, all questioning whether it was algae or chemicals, an accident or on purpose.

On Tuesday night, the Garfield Fire Department’s hazmat engine was dispatched to the scene along with the Bergen County hazmat as the green color was initially believed to be hazardous, according to the Garfield Police Department.

Residents noticed this activity on their neighborhood Ring accounts as one user posted, “Anyone know what’s happening at the Price Rite in Garfield? Huge fire department present, hazmat and dangerous materials.”

By Wednesday afternoon the water was back to its normal color.

As it turns out, the green color that stirred up all sorts of commotion was actually a type of dye that is routinely used to trace groundwater.

“Dye tracing is a common method used for understanding groundwater movement,” according to the Kentucky Geological Survey. When doing this type of water testing, dye is poured (or injected) into a sinking stream, well, sinkhole, or body of water, where it is carried by flowing water. The location where the dye is recovered indicates a connection from its starting point to its ending point.

In this specific incident, according to the Garfield City Manager Erin Delaney, the dye was used to determine the location of an obstruction that was causing flooding.

“The city has been experiencing flooding in a specific area that has not had issues with flooding before. We noticed it only began after the construction of the new high school stadium,” said Delaney. “Therefore, we hired a contractor, Montana Construction, to investigate the matter and ‘TV’ the lines. Their Jet Vac and CCTV crew inserted a green dye into the storm line to trace the source since we were unable to perform a complete televising of the line to an obstruction in the storm drain.”

The dye is non-toxic and non-hazardous, is not in the drinking water, and does not pose a threat to residents or wildlife.

As a result of using the dye, the city was able to determine the cause of the obstruction and the flooding, and the dye has since dissipated.

There are no plans in place to conduct this type of testing again in the near future.