Newton Creek is a 6.5-kilometer-long bay on the East River. It runs along the industrial border of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Maspeth, Queens. Once it was a site of mansions, then a Mecca for shipbuilders, later a site of refineries and industries. Today it is a toxic waterway, a dumping ground with floating oil from nearby refineries. Lying in the heart of New York City, Newton Creek is one of the dirtiest bodies of water in the United States.
On February 12, 1933, the last ferry that connected Greenpoint and Manhattan left Newton Creek's banks and with it went its glory days. Unlike the oil refineries, the ferry service did not survive the Great Depression. For the past dozens of years, families with children came to walk along the creek’s shore, even though the smell probably warned them that it was not the best place for their strolls. There were even some who came to fish. "I used to come here with my grandfather, when I was a child, just to hang out," says Ricardo, a 45-year-old Puerto Rican man who grew up in Greenpoint. "This is a place from my childhood and I am having a hard time accepting the fact that today the creek is a sewer," he adds. Ricardo recently began to work with Riverkeeper, informing them of new industries that pollute the creek.
Floating oil
Today, Newton Creek is frightening not only with its terrible stench, which hovers along its shore, but also with the skeletons of factory buildings, garbage piled up along the shore, and thick layers of floating oil spewed by companies such as Peerless or Mobil Oil. "It is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States. It is so full of bacteria that drinking its water could kill you or certainly make you very ill," claims Basil Seggos, a Riverkeeper employee who works on investigating Newton Creek's pollution. "A few years ago we heard of a firefighter who jumped into Newton Creek trying to save a person attempting suicide. During the rescue he swallowed some water and died two days later."
Every two to three weeks Riverkeeper patrols the river. Several New York newspaper reporters and councilmembers Eric Gioia (Queens) and David Yassky (Brooklyn) took part in the recent patrol. On March 8, they joined Riverkeeper as plaintiffs in a case against ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco and BP Amoco filed with the U.S. District Court - Eastern District of New York. Efforts to save the creek has prompted the creation of the Newton Creek Alliance.
The oil stench is there all the time. As the patrol approaches the area around the ExxonMobil refinery, Seggos reaches out and collects a sample. What he finds in the container is almost pure oil. Riverkeeper takes samples from the creek at different places—by the Pulaski, Greenpoint Avenue and Kosciuszko bridges, and by the Peerless refinery to use as evidence in the court case. Samples taken by the East River, where water from the creek and the river meet, are the cleanest. Even there, at the mouth of the river, you can find floating oil, even though there is just enough oxygen in the water for a fish to survive. "The less oxygen there is the less chance for fish to survive. At different spots there is zero oxygen," says Seggos.
“There are no sources of fresh water and no exchange of water takes place because the creek is too far away from East River. The only inflow is from sewage pipes. It is a complete catastrophe. The water is so full of bacteria that people should not even go there in a boat," Seggos warns.
The State Department of Environmental Conservation plans to build a system to oxygenate the water, but those plans are very distant. Some of New York's municipal sewage reaches the creek as well. With the water full of contaminants, there are places where no life exists in the creek. Sometimes fish are swept up creek by the waves and wind. If a bird lands there and swallows the water, the poisons contaminate the bird and the bird spread the contamination. "With what it swallowed as well as other contaminants that attach to the wings, these chemicals can even reach Maine," claims Seggos.
Fumes over Greenpoint
When it rains, water seeps deep into the contaminated ground, taking oil to the groundwater. The groundwater in Greenpoint is useless. Vapors from the spills are also a health hazard. Both residents and those who work in local factories inhale the toxic fumes. "When you are here, it is almost as if you were at a gas station. It most certainly is not healthy for those who have to breathe this air. I have in mind mostly factory workers, but we also have to remember that there are about 100 residential buildings and a few dozen businesses in this area," says Basil Seggos.
"The truth of a matter is that nobody has done research that would show exactly what the vapors from the creek consist of," says Krystyna Holowacz, a volunteer from Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning, who has lived in Greenpoint for 30 years. Irene Klementowicz, cofounder of the Newton Creek Monitoring Committee, says: "Our children and families live here and we are surrounded by pollution. There is an underground oil spill that affects both the water and the air."
Nobody is willing to answer the question of what the Newton Creek water really contains or what’s in the fumes. "Everybody knows that Newton Creek is contaminated. But it not under our jurisdiction. It is under the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC)," says Natalie Mona of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, New York region. The state department did not answer our request for a comment on this matter.
In the heart of New York
How is it possible that the most polluted body of water in the United States is in the heart of New York City? The truth is that not many people know about it. "Even we, an organization that takes care of protecting the local bodies of water, found out about it by accident. We were in our patrol boat looking for people fishing – people from low-income families eat their catch, which are full of toxic substances. We were trying to find places where people fish and then ask the City Council to place warning signs. That is when we ran into the bay. We were shocked with what we found," Seggos remembers.
"For many years, industries with their sites along the creek polluted the creek with their industrial waste. There were no government regulations concerning this until 1972," says Holowacz.
Contamination of the creek began about 150 years after European settlers reached Maspeth in 1642. After the Revolutionary War, when New York was developing economically, trade along Newton Creek was becoming stronger. There were fields, residential houses (John Jacob Astor lived there), as well as factories and shops where ropes and chemicals were produced. In the beginning of the 19th century, the shipbuilding industry began to flourish – from the 1840s, throughout the Civil War, hundreds of ships were built there. During the Industrial Revolution, the shipbuilding industry slowed down and oil refineries as well as textile industries replaced it. According to the Encyclopedia of New York State, the ship and barge traffic became so heavy that, next to the Mississippi, it was the second busiest river in the country. In 1915, 102,270 ships traveled down Newton Creek, carrying 5,435,016 tons of cargo.
Back in 1889, the New York Times mentioned the degradation of Newton Creek's water. In 1891, Brooklyn's Smelling Committee, a group created to control the creek’s condition, declared the bay area to be the worst smelling in the city. In their description they mentioned "piles of rotten meat from local butchers." This was only the beginning of the contamination problems. Worse was to come with the refineries. In 1854, the first kerosene refinery was created. By the end of 19th century, Long Island City had the highest concentration of industries in the United States. Thousands of people came to Newton Creek to work in the local sugar mills, cooperages, textile factories and refineries. By 1880, there were 50 refineries on the Long Island City side of the creek, among the first was Standard Oil. On average, each poured 30,000 gallons of toxic waste into the water.
However, the true disaster was to come later. In the 1940s, oil started spilling into the sewage pipes along the bay, accumulating on a nine acre area. On October 5, 1950, the oil spill caused an explosion, and about 25 sewer covers flew three stories into the air, shattering windows in the buildings in the area. Seventeen million gallons of oil spilled into the soil, which increased the size of the entire spill to 55 acres. Its volume exceeded the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989.
Curiously, after all these years, there’s been no cleanup action, even though floating oil covered the surface of the creek and its banks were full of black clammy grease. The smell of oil that filled the neighborhood gave no doubts about what that black grease was.
The spill was revealed for the first time in 1978, after it was discovered by the Coast Guard.
"In my opinion, the Coast Guard report was not very precise. Oil began to seep into the ground water in the Greenpoint area at the beginning of the 20th century, when Standard Oil and later Exxon Mobil and BPAmoco came to the area. The problem increased after the explosion," says Basil Seggos. Currently the spill stretches from Greenpoint Avenue to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and beyond, with the slime between 30cm to 3m thick. As the Coast Guard report reads, two acres of the spill are on the Amoco site, one on Mobil site, and 52 acres outside their territories.
Slow cleanup
In 1990, the court together with the NYSDEC ordered the companies that own the contaminated sites to begin the cleanup. The process, however, is not very effective. First of all the cleanup began very late. "The reason why nothing was done between 1950 and 1990 is that not everyone knew about the spill, and even those who knew did not care much about it. The companies to blame were huge businesses, selling millions of gallons of oil yearly; they were not going to care about a neighborhood with Polish immigrants – at that time they cared only about Manhattan. It was only after the Clean Water Act of 1972 that anybody considered the quality of water," says Seggos.
Currently, the corporations at the spill sites—Amoco and Mobil—in accordance with a court order, use pumping stations to collect the water and separate out the oil. The oil is being put into barrels and the so-called free product is then sent to refineries in New Jersey. This process is very slow. "Exxon always tells us that they inherited this problem, which has been here since the 1900s. They claim to do what they can and that they don't want to harm Newton Creek or the local residents. I am very skeptical about what they say. They are notorious for breaking the law, as far as environment is concerned," says Seggos. Exxon Mobil did not answer Nowy Dziennik's phone calls about this matter.
Riverkeeper together with Newton Creek Alliance members sued Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Texaco and BP Amoco for breaking the Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. They want to speed up the cleanup process. If the court awards them restitution money, the judge would order the creation of an environmental fund where the corporations could deposit the funds. Most likely, it will not be possible to clean up 100 percent of the oil. According to Seggos: "There are areas where it is easy to access the spill, but there are places where it is stuck under rocks." Some of the oil goes into the inlet and from there it flows into the East River.
Seggos reports that of the corporations involved, only Exxon Mobil and BP Amoco are trying to do something to improve the condition of Newton Creek. According to state data, Mobil removed 5 million gallons of oil. Texaco however, completely ignored the summons, not even responding to Newton Creek Alliance's letters.
It is not the first time that Riverkeeper has tried to save Newton Creek. In October of last year they sued five corporations: Quality Concrete Corp., Newton Metal Corp., UB Distributors, Majjam Supply Co. and Alloco Recycling, which spilled toxic waste into the creek. "Those companies did a fantastic job," said Seggo.
Maybe there is hope yet for the Greenpoint industrial waterfront. An Olympic Village is supposed to be created on the Long Island City side; perhaps this will be reason enough to take some action. There is a beautiful view of Manhattan there. If the riverside was cleaned, it could be a great place for New Yorkers to spend leisure time. "It should be the Golden Coast of Brooklyn and Queens," says the council member Gioia, adding that in the future he sees there is of waterfront parks, bike routes and ferries instead of today's dead coast.
