Description
The channel is approximately 10 miles (16 km) long and connects Raritan Bay on its south end with Newark Bay on the north. Along the New Jersey side it is primarily lined with industrial sites, part of which is called the Chemical Coast. The Staten Island side is primarily lined with salt marshes.
A heavily used marine channel, it provides access for ocean-going container ships to Port Newark and to industrial facilities along the channel itself. It also provides the primary marine access to the now-closed Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.
The channel is dredged periodically to a depth of 35–37 feet (11 m) and a width of 600 feet (183 m) to maintain its usefulness for commercial ship passage.
Because of the complex nature of the tides in New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary near the mouth of the Hudson River, the hydrology of the Arthur Kill is still an open subject. In particular, the net flow of the channel is not well established. It was heavily polluted in the nineteen sixties and seventies, with few fish species able to live in it. Since the nineteen nineties, crabs, baitfishes, striped bass and even bluefish have returned to this water.
It is spanned by the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing, as well as by the Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Bridge, a railroad bridge and the largest bridge of its type in the United States.
It contains two small uninhabited islands, Prall's Island and the Isle of Meadows, both of which belong to the borough of Staten Island.
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