Hackensack River

The Hackensack River is a river, approximately 45 miles long, in the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey, emptying into Newark Bay, a back chamber of New York Harbor. The watershed of the river includes part of the suburban area outside New York City just west of the lower Hudson River, which it roughly parallels, separated from it by the New Jersey Palisades. It also flows through and drains the New Jersey Meadowlands. The lower river, which is navigable as far as the city of Hackensack, is heavily industrialized and forms a commercial extension of Newark Bay. Once believed to be among the most polluted water courses in the United States, it staged a modest revival by the late 2000s.

The Hackensack River rises in southeastern New York, in Rockland County, in the Sweet Swamp, just west of the Hudson River and approximately 1 mi south of West Haverstraw. It flows briefly southeast, into the Lake DeForest reservoir, separated from the Hudson by less than 3 mi . South of the dam, it then flows south, diverging from the Hudson. Just across the New Jersey state line, in northern Bergen County, it is impounded to form the reservoir Lake Tappan near River Vale.

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