Since the earliest days of Greenpoint’s establishment as a shipbuilding hub and industrial landmark, the creek that’s helped power the region’s rise has been one of the most polluted waterways in the country. After over a decade of planning, lobbying and investigating, the Environmental Protection Agency officially has a plan to clean (part of) it up.
Project managers from the EPA presented their proposed plan alternatives to remove contaminated sediment from the polluted East Branch of Newtown Creek, a federal Superfund site, in a public meeting with stakeholders and community activists last Wednesday.
“First, we’ve identified there’s a problem. Next, we’re looking at what risks the site poses, and then from that, how can it be cleaned up,” said Natalie Loney, the EPA community engagement coordinator linked to the project.
The Superfund program allows for the agency to provide assistance and authority to deal with contaminated sites across the country when there is no one viable party to blame for the pollution.
In the case of Newtown Creek, the EPA identified six responsible parties who are required to finance the remediation project and its related studies, including the city of New York, ExxonMobil, BP America, Texaco and National Grid.
“It’s been a very long process, and we’re finally getting excited that there’s finally going to be action,” said Mike Dulong, legal program director at Riverkeeper, an environmental organization that works to protect the Hudson River and its tributaries. Riverkeeper originally sued ExxonMobil before Newtown Creek was finally listed as a Superfund site back in 2010.
“For 100 years, this is going to determine where residences are, where businesses are, whether human health is protected, how we use the creek for recreation — so it is extremely important,” Dulong said.
The EPA presented six alternatives at Wednesday’s meeting, including an agency-selected preference, and a public comment period for anyone to weigh in and provide feedback on the alternatives is now active until October 28.
Because the longtime pollution resulted in “contaminants of concern” reaching the sediment of Newtown Creek, most of the presented proposals for the East Branch cleanup involved a level of dredging — a full removal into either a landfill or a new purpose — according to Rupika Ketu, the EPA remedial project manager for the site.
Ketu also mentioned extensive monitoring will be implemented following the dredging.
“It’s going to be structured so that the potential impacts to the protectiveness of the remedy are addressed as soon as possible,” Ketu said.
Throughout the meeting, some of the estimated 40 attendees voiced confusion over certain elements of the dredging proposals, with the EPA maintaining that further investigations would be conducted as it sees how contaminated certain parts of the branch’s sediment is.
Willis Elkins is the executive director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, a community organization that’s dedicated to revitalizing the polluted creek. During the meeting, Elkins expressed disappointment that there weren’t more specific explanations for the effects of each proposal but said he understood that the presentation needed to be “high-level” and accessible to the community.
“You have a complicated site, you have a complicated remedy, but it felt like there was more opportunity to really dive into some of the nuts and bolts,” Elkins said following the meeting.
Loney acknowledged the varied public responses to the details shared at the meeting and compared this stage of the Superfund process to building a house.
“You know, you find the location, and then you kind of decide on the design of the home, but you don’t really talk about, you know, what color tile are you going to be using in the guest bathroom — really that comes with the actual fine-tuning of the design,” Loney said.
While it’s too soon to say what the “bathroom tile” will look like when it comes to the East Branch’s cleanup, Loney feels somewhat confident that the EPA will go with their preferred plan they presented: a combination of dredging and installing an armored cap at the bottom of the creek to protect uncontaminated material.
“There may be adjustments made, based on real-world conditions, but I feel pretty comfortable that this is the remedy that we’ll be going with,” Loney said.
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