by
(amb of creek under narration)
Narration:
One trip up Newtown Creek is all it takes to see how it earned its reputation as the most polluted urban waterway in the country. Its banks are lined with oil and gas terminals, cement and other factories. The smell coming off the water thickens the air. And that smell is what the environmental organization Riverkeeper, is hoping to sear into the memories of a group of students from a nearby high school. Riverkeeper has gathered the Brooklyn students for a trip up the creek, with the goal of educating them about pollution. Sarah Froiken helps lead the trips.
AX: Sarah Froiken:
If you're looking to educate kids about pollution, this is a pretty good place to do it. Cause you've got basically any kind of water pollution possible happening on this creek right now. so it's an unfortunate situation for us but a great learning opportunity for them I guess you could say.
(fade up sound of kids and teacher taking water samples):
Narration:
The students gather on a makeshift boat launch--the only public access point on the three and a half mile long Newtown Creek. The Manhattan skyline rises to the left. The Pulaski Bridge connecting Queens to Brooklyn rises to the right. The students are ninth graders at the Harbor School in Bushwick. While the students wait for the boat to arrive, they stand on shore and take water samples.
AX: teachers and students:
- Okay, so Juddell, Maurice, you're gonna be very
careful,
-ooh lemme do it, lemme do it (kids all clamoring)
-okay great-don't go down any lower than you are. No
lower than this.
-get the rope down all the way first
-can you dive in this?
You could but you'd get sick because thereís a lot of
bacteria in the water
-eeww
-now anything with water on it, Juddelle should handle
because she's got the gloves on.
-There's not enough water
-try it again, just go down and kind of jostle
it--sounds of water-that's it that's it
good job (clapping, laughing) oh, careful, don't
splash it on everyone
I'm gonna bring the water quality kit over here
Juddelle- now this water is definitely dirtier than
all the others!
Narration:
The most notorious incident in the creek's history happened fifty years ago. That's when seventeen million gallons of oil spilled into the ground near the creek: That's twice the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska. The spill wasn't discovered until the late 1970s, and has never been cleaned up.
Narration:
The boat pulls up and Captain John Lipscomb gets it ready for launch. Then the students pile in. Lipscomb gives them a talk on how dangerous the creek's water is.
AX: John Lipscomb:
So the water is cold. And no matter how good a swimmer you are you cannot swim in the cold and you cannot swim the bacteria that's in this water. So falling in even though you'd be safe with the life jacket is a really bad plan because the water's so dirty.
Narration:
Once the students suit up with life jackets, Seggos shows them where they'll be going on a map.
AX: Basil Seggos:
We're gonna go out into the East River and then up the creek as far as we can which is about this point right here, under the bridge--the further we go up the creek, the dirtier it gets and the more interesting it gets. Keep your eyes open. We'll find some polluters today and hopefully do something about it.
Narration:
Once the boat motors east, deeper into the creek, the surreal landscape bustles with industry. On the right side, there are oil tanks and terminals. Asphalt and cement plants and on the left, recycling and car crushing plants. Seggos says all of the different varieties of pollution change the water's color.
AX: Basil Seggos:
It'll be white with sewage one day, green with algae another day, red with a pollutant, white with cement discharge, you know it's a whole mix of different colors.
Narration:
Near the source of the oil spill, the water is literally black and thick with ooze. It barely looks like water. But oil isn't the biggest pollution problem on the creek. Seggos tells the students that the city's sewer system dumps rainwater mixed with untreated industrial and human waste, right into the water.
AX: Basil Seggos:
-Look at the surface of the creek, guys. Look at the
surface. Right now, Newtown Creek sewage plant right
here treats 280 million gallons of sewage a day. And
discharges it into the creek. Look at all the nasty
foam here on the surface of the creek. And smell it.
What does it smell like?
-doo doo.
-Doo doo? Yeah. Well, that's what it is. It's doo doo.
Partially treated doo doo.
(SOUND OF WATER AND BOAT MOTOR fade)
Narration:
The condition of Newtown Creek mirrors the condition of the neighborhoods around it. Christine Holwacz co-chairs the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee and is community Liaison for the city's Department of Environmental Protection. Her office is inside the noisy headquarters of the Newtown Creek Sewage Treatment Plant--the largest on the East Coast. Holwacz has been an activist in this neighborhood, Greenpoint, for more than thirty years. She says she got involved because the area bears such a heavy environmental burden.
AX: Christine Holwacz:
Everything gets stuck in Greenpoint, I have to tell you. Ok? Whether it's the sewage treatment plant, we had an incinerator here, we also have transfer stations. 40 percent of the garbage comes to Greenpoint. An area that has traditionally been immigrant and working class, and these people don't have time to advocate for themselves. So what happened is over the years they became the garbage dump for the environmental disaster area of New York City.
Narration:
More than one-third of the City's garbage is processed in Greenpoint. The city's Health department reports that the district has three times the national cancer rate, and the third highest asthma rate in New York City. Part of the problem is the neighborhood's proximity to the entrance of the Midtown Tunnel, and local highways.
(Truck sound)
Narration:
Heavy trucks rumble through the area on their way to twenty three local waste transfer stations, a nuclear storage facility, power plants, and until recently, an incinerator. Laura Hofmann says all this pollution is making her and neighbors sick--literally. She is on the board of two local environmental groups and she's lived in Greenpoint her entire life-46 years. She has documented ten cases of brain cancer within a ten-block radius of her home near the waterfront.
AX: Laura Hofmann:
I'm the third person in my building to have Lupus. The two before me are dead. And one of my children, my oldest son also has very strong lab results indicating that he most likely has lupus also. I have asthma, my youngest son has asthma, and my family is laden with different syndromes, symptoms conditions that are all related to allergy and different environmental problems.
Narration:
When she found out she was sick, Hofmann says she wanted to move out of Greenpoint.
AX: Laura Hofmann:
But I am more of a fighter than the type to abandon. So I guess I just dug my heels in and decided to declare war on whatever might be causing it.
Narration:
Hofmann says anger fuels her passion to improve the neighborhood's environment.
AX: Laura Hofmann:
I get so upset that sometimes I feel like I'm gonna cry when I'm testifying because it is so personal. And I mean, if I know it, they know it. When you get down to it, people really have to weigh what's more important to them, the almighty dollar or people's lives.
Narration:
It would take billions of almighty dollars to fully clean up the creek and the neighborhood. City Councilmember David Yassky, who represents the Newtown Creek area and chairs the Council's Waterfronts committee, says that's exactly why it hasn't happened. He says the city has done nothing to comply with an old federal court order to revamp its sewer system, and come into compliance with the 1972 Clean Water Act. Last year, the city went to court to ask for more time. Because the city's taking so long to comply, the Department of Environmental Protection pays fines to the tune of millions of dollars a year. Yassky says the situation is almost criminal.
AX: Councilmember Yassky:
The truth is the government, the city government itself is, remains a significant source of water pollution. Mayor Giuliani, the previous mayor, left Mayor Bloomberg with a 12 yr old court order, virtually no progress, and a sewage overflow problem that is enormous, so, I'm troubled that Mayor Bloomberg chose to ask the state for another delay in the enforcement deadlines. I think rather than continuing to put the problem off to the next generation, we should deal with it ourselves.
Narration:
Dealing with the problem is tangled up with questions of development. On the one hand, the city's rezoning plan would allow residential towers on the waterfront that would triple the neighborhoods population, and adding more stress to the sewer system. On the other hand, the city's bid to host the 2012 Olympics would focus attention on the creek's problems because it would put athlete housing right next to Newtown Creek. Holwacz says she hopes that will highlight the pollution in the creek.
AX: Christine Holwacz:
And I think in some ways it's a good thing for giving it notoriety. And bringing it up to everybody's attention so maybe something gets done.
(sound of boat docking, engine slowing and turning off) (sounds of kids leaving boat):
Narration:
After a few hours cruising the creek, the Riverkeeper boat turns around and heads back to the launch site and the students take off their life jackets.
KIDS:
- thank you for the life jackets.
Narration:
Back on shore, Seggos says Newtown Creek is not isolated. It connects with the East River, New York Harbor, the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. Pollution travels with the current throughout the entire region. And fish or birds that are contaminated by the water, migrate, spreading the toxins. But even though it's deadly, Seggos says people fish in the creek all the time.
AX:Basil:
You have poor people in the neighborhood subsisting off of these fish. The warnings are bilingual, but they're on websites or they're on pamphlets, which your average person here in Greenpoint or Long Island City or down in Williamsburg just isn't reading or getting. And when it comes to the choice between getting cancer in 20 years or going hungry that night you're gonna eat whatever's in front of you. We've talked to people here who've been fishing here for 20 and 30 years. If they were to test their blood they'd find astronomical levels of PCBs, cadmium and mercury and lead and everything.
Narration:
Nevertheless, Seggos says he is hopeful about the future of Newtown Creek.
AX: Basil:
it is like traveling up into the heart of darkness in many ways--but there's so much optimism now with these kids we're bringing out and everyone else, that you know, there is actually something good that can be done about it. There is actually a future for the creek. There's hope for it.
Narration:
The city's rezoning plan for the North Brooklyn waterfront will be finalized on May third, and the International Olympic Committee will decide on the city's bid to host the 2012 Games in July. For Columbia Radio News, I'm Jessica Mador