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Oil Spills in the Middle of New York |
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By Katherine Stapp*
For decades oil leaks have been contaminating a creek that crosses two of New York's famed boroughs. Activists are taking legal action against Exxon Mobil and other oil companies.
NEW YORK - There are good days and bad days at Newtown Creek, a 2.4-km waterway dividing the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in New York City that also carries the dubious distinction of being the most polluted in the country.
On good days, the water is almost translucent near the mouth of the creek, and one might see tiny seahorses or anemones.
On bad days, depending on the weather and the tides, it looks like a psychedelic nightmare, and the cocktail of various odors can be overpowering.
Sung Lim, of the non-profit group East River Apprenticeshop, knows the creek and its secrets. He takes high school students on tours of the waterway, to "show them what's beautiful about it, but also to teach them about the pollution and conservation."
"Newtown Creek is our backyard," said Lim, head instructor at the Apprenticeshop, which teaches conservation and leadership to New York youth through boat building and seamanship training.
"It's like a sensory pummeling. When it rains, you can see a combination of the sewer outflow and oil film on the surface of the water... Just the other day we went out after a storm and there were pools of sewage and oil that didn't want to mix, creating all these fractal shapes. It was really something," he said.
The oil -- 64 million liters of it -- has been drifting around the stagnant creek for more than five decades. Most of it oozed from leaky storage tanks in the 1940s and 1950s located on land owned by companies like Standard Oil of New York, now ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company.
The Newtown accumulated spill is half again as large as the notorious 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, for which the company was fined 150 million dollars.
By contrast, no penalties have ever been levied for Newtown Creek, and little action has been taken by either the city or state to compel a clean-up.
The spill was first spotted by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter in 1978. It took twelve more years for New York State to enter into a consent order with ExxonMobil, and since the deal did not establish clean-up benchmarks, critics say it allowed the company to drag its feet almost indefinitely.
ExxonMobil acknowledges responsibility for the disaster, but insists that its cleanup efforts -- comprising removal of about 11.3 million liters of oil so far -- have been adequate. That is less than a fifth of the total.
"ExxonMobil has conducted remediation work in Greenpoint (the Brooklyn neighborhood along the creek), and that work continues today," a company spokesperson told reporters in January.
"We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously, and we fully intend to comply with the requirements of the agreements previously signed" with the state environmental protection department."
Now a coalition led by Riverkeeper, a local environmental watchdog, is about to file a lawsuit to demand immediate intervention, as well as compensation, for the affected communities, including 100 homes.
The main culprit, they say, as it was in 1989, is ExxonMobil. Other companies cited in the notice of intention to file suit include BP Amoco and ChevronTexaco, although Riverkeeper believes they are responsible for a tiny fraction of the spill compared to ExxonMobil.
Basil Seggos, Riverkeeper's lead investigator, says meetings with the company have been unproductive.
"We've gotten the runaround but we're confident that we have a case," said Seggos. "Exxon can outspend and out-lawyer us forever, but they can never 'out-PR' us. What they've done is patently ridiculous."
"It's really mind-boggling," he added. "The creek is covered with a sheen of oil 365 days a year."
And oil is not the only problem. Riverkeeper has also threatened to sue five manufacturers that it says are violating the Clean Water Act of 1972 by dumping toxins and garbage into the creek.
It was perhaps premonition that led the area's indigenous groups to name the creek Maspeth, which means "in the bad water place."
As for why so little attention has been paid to the area, Seggos believes it's a simple matter of David versus Goliath.
"These are ethnic communities with little money or political power," he said. "The industries were generating revenue for the city, and any crackdown would endanger the business climate."
But Riverkeeper recently found allies in local government to press their case. Two members of the New York City Council, David Yassky of Brooklyn and Eric Gioia of Queens, have signed on to the suit as co-plaintiffs, along with concerned businesses and residents.
"We got involved because it's one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history and these companies aren't cleaning it up fast enough," said Evan Thies, spokesman for Councilman Yassky.
There has never been a scientific survey of Newtown Creek residents. "But the areas (surrounding the creek) have very high rates of cancer and chronic illnesses compared to other parts of the city. It stands to reason that's it at least partly due to these chemicals," he said.
Sung Lim, the guide, holds out hope that publicity about the contaminated creek will bring in donations for its clean-up. Immediate action is critical, he added, because the seepage is ongoing. "The oil isn't supposed to leach into the creek, but you see it every day."
* Katherine Stapp is a Tierramérica contributor.
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