by Shia Michele Levitt
Ambi:
Sound of ice cream truck song
Narration:
It's the familiar song of the ice cream truck once again. This seasonal sound coincides with the onset of spring in the eastern seaboard, and warmer summer months ahead. In this quiet, residential area in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, springtime finds children playing ball outside and riding bikes in the street. But here in Greenpoint, warmer weather brings with it something far less welcoming - a noticeable stench of oil, sewage and chemical smells from nearby industrial area. Larry Palladino lives with his wife and children on a street bordering the industrial part of town.
Palladino
"We get a lot of rain, and in the catch basins, in the drains, all over, not even just in Greenpoint, you can smell gasoline. .You can smell gas as if there was gas spilled down the sewer."
Handley:
"In the summer it's worse. Sometimes, you come out and it's like, ooh, what's that smell?" I don't know where the smell comes from but it's horrible."
Narration:
Joanne Handley, like Larry Palladino, lives on Hausman Street, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Walking around the blocks of the neighborhood, smells of paint thinner, oil and other unidentifiable chemicals periodically waft into your nostrils. The neighborhood is home to a close-knit and mostly working-class community— and most say the stench has been around for as long as they remember. Greenpoint is home to what experts call the largest urban oil spill in North America—a spill more than one and a half times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Handley's home --and the Palladino's - lie atop the plume. Basil Seggos is a pollution investigator for an environmental group called Riverkeeper that advocates for aggressive cleanup of New York City's waterways.
Seggos:
"This spill is grown to 55 acres at least-- we think it actually might be a lot bigger than that. It's migrated under residential, commercial and industrial Brooklyn. It's underneath a hundred homes."
Narration:
Decades ago, oil seeped through from underground storage tanks at a refinery owned by Exxon-Mobil's predecessor, the Standard Oil Company. Experts thing the bulk of the spill originated around the 1950s—or possibly earlier. Over the course of many years, the oil leaked through and accumulated in the water underground. The U. S. Coast Guard discovered the spill in 1978, and Mobil took responsibility in 1989. The company has been taking steps to clean up the contaminated area ever since. Additional smaller spills - from other companies above the plume --have added several thousand gallons of oil -- on top of the spill already there. Today, oil can be seen leaking onto the waters of a nearby creek, most of it stuck behind in a containment partition set up to catch the oil.
Ambience:
Track 2:
0:00 "Let it ride, in the back, just drop it" Splash sound. :13
Narration:
:14
On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon, a team of six scientists and divers are launching a large inflatable boat into the waters of Newtown Creek. The scientists plan to travel up the creek to collect water samples in order to determine pollution levels. Ludger Balan is leading the expedition.
Balan
"We're the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy and we've been monitoring Newtown Creek… Newtown Creek, if you can see is lined by a lot of industrial plants, as you can see, without people monitoring and keeping an eye, pollution is pretty rampant."
Ambience:
"I need some strong arms to hand me that motor…… It's very heavy." "Yes, we've got it."
Narration:
Balan's organization has joined Riverkeeper in a lawsuit they plan to file against Exxon- Mobil, and others responsible for the spill. The suit claims that continued seepage of oil into the creek means the company is in violation of the Clean Water Act, and other federal laws. On today's trip, Balan hopes to document pollution here, as evidence that the creek's cleanup has not gone far or fast enough.
Balan:
"Today we're going to go in and try to get an environmental assessment of the creek."
Ambi:
Wind
Narration:
The team travels up the creek, which winds past the property of about a half dozen oil companies, a car scrapping facility, and the site of an old refinery. The creek stretches east for about 3 and a half miles from its mouth at the East River. At Meeker Avenue, about a mile from where they launched the boat, water pours out of a permitted discharge pipe and into the creek. The crew stops to take water samples.
Ambience
SOUND OF WATER DISCHARGING.
Narration:
A few yards from here, the oil spill is most visible. This is the area where the Coast Guard originally discovered that oil was leaking from the ground into Newtown Creek's waters. Today, black stains appear on a bulkhead lining the creek. A black and brown gooey substance floats inside a containment device that is set up to catch oil as it reaches the creek.
A block away from the water's edge is the intersection of Bridgewater and Meeker Streets-- home to one of the 2 recovery wells for the "Greenpoint remediation treatment" program.
Ambience:
Sounds outside the recovery
Narration:
The non-descript building is made of beige concrete blocks, and has two oversize garage doors. Inside the building, oil and contaminated water is sucked out of the ground and into a large container. There, the oil is separated out and carted away. The Department of Environmental Conservation estimates that 24,000 gallons of oil are removed each month from underground recovery wells like this one at the spill site. About 8 million gallons of oil have been recovered to date.
The combined spill is made up of various types of petroleum as well as diesel fuel. It also contains benzene, a known human carcinogen. Seggos says it is important to determine the consequences of the spill on peoples' health.
Seggos:
"There was never an order for the company to conduct a health study, or to really chronicle what the dramatic impacts of the spill might be. That's certainly one thing we want out of our effort right now is to make sure that the people living and working in this area are protected."
Ambience:
Sound of teen sawing deck beams in woodshop
Narration:
Back at the mouth of the creek, Peter Spagnuolo of the East River Kayak club is supervising teens as they saw wood to build boats they will eventually launch from Newtown Creek.
Although he generally leaves the creek to head for the East River, he says he must use caution when he does venture up Newtown Creek's waters.
Spagnuolo
"You don't want to capsize or fall out of your kayak there cause the water is just nasty. It's oily, it smells bad."
Narration:
Spagnuolo also lives across the street from the boating launch site with his young daughter. She loves to throw stones in the creek, he says, and sometimes, he worries about her safety.
Spagnuolo
"It's an industrial neighborhood, if you live here you have to recognize that the neighborhood has a past, and you have to be careful."
Narration:
Still, Spagnuolo wonders about his decision to stay put.
Spagnuolo
"It's questionable whether you should be raising your kids you know, around all this bad stuff, but I think it's getting better. "
Narration:
The group Riverkeeper is currently in negotiations with Exxon-Mobil over the cleanup. For Columbia Radio News, I'm Shia Levitt.