Environmental Engineering Reference
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and 2010. Thick, iridescent patches of oil float on the water, especially along the edges,
and the smell of hydrocarbons is unmistakable.
In a related but separate case , the city sued oil companies for contaminating groundwa-
ter in Brooklyn and Queens. The city's water utility, the Department of Environment-
al Protection (DEP), has long searched for extra sources of freshwater to supplement
its supplies from upstate. The Brooklyn-Queens Aquifer (BQA) could provide a valu-
able supply for the city in case of drought, a major water tunnel failure, or widespread
fire—except that it is contaminated.
In 2007, the DEP issued the “Brooklyn-Queens Aquifer Feasibility Study,” which
outlined a massive multiphase cleanup of the soils and water beneath Brooklyn and
Queens; it envisioned adding some 100 million to 200 million gallons of BQA water per
day to the city's drinking water system. (Currently the city uses 1.3 billion gallons of
freshwater a day, of which the BQA provides less than 1 percent.) The project has not
been funded, but the city has used the tainted aquifer as a legal tool to go after polluters.
In 2003, the city sued twenty-three oil companies over MTBE contamination of the
aquifer. MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) is an additive used to oxygenate gasoline,
which helps cars burn gas cleanly and reduces tailpipe emissions. MTBEs are highly
soluble in water, have leaked from storage tanks across the country, and are suspected
carcinogens. The city reached settlements totaling $15 million with all of the companies
but one: ExxonMobil.
The city sought $250 million in damages to underwrite a new treatment plant to
clean the water in five wells in southeastern Queens. The oil giant denied it was respons-
ible for polluting the BQA, but in 2009 a federal jury found ExxonMobil liable for con-
taminating the aquifer and said the company knew of the potential for MTBE pollution
but had failed to warn the public. The court awarded the city $104.7 million, and New
York declared “total victory.” Yet even that rich payout is nowhere near enough to clean
up the site or compensate Greenpoint residents.
“AN HISTORIC TURNING POINT”
Today Newtown Creek remains mostly lifeless. Experts have deemed it “severely
stressed” and say that it is no longer a functioning ecosystem. Seagulls, cormorants, and
the occasional heron are seen along its banks, but the water and mud they wade in is
noxious. When a dolphin was spotted swimming upstream in the spring of 2010, biolo-
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