An Oil Spill Grows in Brooklyn

[ensho]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16Prudhomme.html?ref=opinion


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But New Yorkers forget, or don’t know, that a much larger oil spill sits in our own backyard: an estimated 17 million to 30 million gallons of oil, benzene, naptha and other carcinogenic chemicals pollute Newtown Creek and a swath of soil roughly 55 acres wide and up to 25 feet deep, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

People don’t often think of urban creeks as biodiverse waterways, but Newtown Creek was once a rich tidal estuary popular among hunters and fishermen. Starting in the 1870s, however, Standard Oil and other refineries began spilling or dumping excess fuels and toxic chemicals into the water or onto the soil, slowly poisoning the ecosystem. For years, people who hung their clothes out to dry found them darkened by chemical fumes. Today, Newtown Creek is a dead zone: when a dolphin was spotted in the creek in March, experts did not rejoice. They worried about its health.

Despite an underground explosion fed by accumulated oil and gas in 1950, as well as persistent health problems among the creek’s neighbors, it wasn’t until 1978 that officials recognized the problem. That summer a Coast Guard helicopter on a routine patrol noticed a huge black oil plume spewing from the side of Newtown Creek, heading into the East River and New York Harbor. A containment boom was set out, and workers collected 200,000 gallons of degraded gasoline, fuel oil and chemicals, some of which dated to 1948.

Today a viscous rainbow sheen floats on its surface, and the area around it is redolent of hydrocarbons. Although Greenpoint has a lower overall cancer rate than much of the city, it has one of the highest incidences of certain cancers, like leukemia in children and stomach cancer in adults. The creek was designated a Superfund site in 2009.

The spill has also rendered the Brooklyn-Queens Aquifer, once a valuable store of freshwater, undrinkable. The aquifer serves as a recharge zone for the groundwater stores in southeastern Queens that could provide an important backup supply for the city in a drought.
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I've started threads on this disaster before

they never got much attention

NYers should be outraged and in the streets

[azul]

1. Horrible mess. On EPA's topo list of 61 sites.

http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/query/queryhtm/nplprop1.htm

The other 60 major mess-ups are discussed here if posted as well?

[Karenina]

2. Oh, dear...

I meant to rec this and suffered human error!!! Please can someone cover my Luddite ass and another up the ante? :blush:

[CrispyQ]

3. I've done that too. Don't you hate it?

I've suggested on a couple of threads that the admins started regarding the rec/unrec feature, that Rec be on the right & Unrec on the left, much like the number line, positive on the right & negative on the left. I've also suggested they put Rec in green & Unrec in red, but it fell on deaf ears.

[Karenina]

6. That's a good idea!

Thanx for covering my jenky o' ass! :hug:

[me b zola]

4. K&R

[starroute]

5. I once had a summer job which I had to cross that creek to get to

The bus stop was on one side, the job on the other, so I'd cross the bridge by foot every day. And yes, it was nasty.

And then I'd go to the New York Historical Society and look at the old maps which showed Newtown Creek when it was an actual creek that wound through much of what is now Queens, instead of a little stump of a polluted inlet. And I would dream about what New York City could be like if all the creeks and other natural terrain were uncovered again and people lived among them instead of on top of them.

[BeFree]

7. Oh, what a dreamer you are

Thank gawd we have companies like BP that keep your dreams from coming true.
If you had your way profits would be down like about 0.000000000001% and how then could we afford all the crap we can't afford?

You dreamer environmentalists who wish the natural world to remain somewhat natural will be the death of us all. We can't live naturally... don't you grok that?

[BeFree]

8. Hey!! JK.

Just Kidding.... in case anyone gets upset.