Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
gists worried about its health and were relieved when it turned and swam downstream
into the relatively clean water of New York Harbor.
Newtown Creek is part of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary, which the EPA
lists as an “ estuary of national signiicance . ” The agency has been sampling the creek's
water since the 1980s; when EPA scientists tested the creek bed in 2009, they found sed-
iments along its entire length were impregnated with toxic contaminants.
By 2010, the oil companies ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron had removed 11 million
gallons of oil from the contaminated zone. Depending on which experts you believe, an-
other 20 million gallons of oily pollutants could remain beneath Greenpoint; it is even
possible that the vapors trapped underground could explode again. ExxonMobil estim-
ates it will take twenty years to pump the remaining oil out of the ground and water
there. But even then, the soil will remain saturated with other toxic compounds, such as
xylene, toluene, and methane.
In October 2010, the creek was designated a Superfund site , meaning the federal gov-
ernment will mandate a rigorous cleanup. While the Super-fund law allows for the use
of federal funds for remediation—which the EPA estimates will take at least fifteen years
and cost over $400 million—most of the cost will be borne by the polluters. Numerous
companies are likely to be on the hook, and five of them—ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron
Texaco, Phelps Dodge, and National Grid—have already volunteered to underwrite the
remediation. A Superfund designation requires years of environmental study of a site
before work can begin. Once under way, the cleanup might consist of a light dredging of
contaminated soil, which would be replaced with clean fill, or it might require a much
deeper cleaning, to thoroughly scour out the contaminants. Either way, the cleanup will
only remove toxins from the shoreline and sediments of Newtown Creek. It does not
address other, equally pressing, water quality issues, such as storm-water runoff and raw
sewage spewing into local waters, which aren't eligible.
As with thousands of other contaminated sites across the country, the only way to
completely remediate the black mayonnaise is to excavate the entire polluted zone, in-
cluding the creek bed, the shoreline, and much of the neighborhood, and replace it with
clean fill. This would be massively expensive and would require the government to con-
demn a large swath of Greenpoint. It will never be practical to entirely rid Greenpoint
of industrial pollutants.
More likely, the polluted zone will be partly cleaned, and the remaining pollutants
will be capped and left alone. This solution is far from perfect—it will allow toxins to
continue to leak into the water and the soil—but it is a pragmatic compromise similar
to those instituted in New York Harbor and the Hudson River. Wildlife has returned to
those waterways, which remain polluted by PCBs and mercury, making their fish and
ducks unsafe to eat.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search