In the letter, Clinton raised concerns over the proximity and potentially harmful effects of hazardous substances found in the creek.
“New Yorkers living in communities near Newtown Creek have suffered long enough,” she wrote. “We know that there are dangerous chemicals in the soil, water and air at sites around Newtown Creek. It’s time to put the resources of the Superfund program to work to conduct additional tests at known contamination hotspots to see whether a federal cleanup should go forward.”
Having Clinton’s support is a huge step toward mitigating the creek’s pollution, said Katie Schmid, a spokesperson for the Newtown Creek Alliance. “Hillary is one of the more intelligent, active senators and is great on environmental issues,” she said. “She’s recognized also as being pragmatic. Hopefully she impresses upon the EPA ... how serious the contamination issue is in Newtown Creek.”
While the oil spill dates back to the 1940s and 50s, oil is still seeping into the creek and the surrounding soil and groundwater today. Estimates put the extent of the oil spill at between 17 and 30 million gallons — greater than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off the coast of Alaska.
The first step in cleaning up the site is determining the full extent of the problem, which is what Clinton has requested.
Clinton — who chairs the Superfund and Environmental Health Subcommittee and is a member of the Senate’s Environmental and Public Works Committee — stressed in the letter that residents in the vicinity of the creek have been forced to live in potentially dangerous conditions, and the exposure has led to community concern about potential pockets of serious illness.
Mitigation has been a long-time coming for the creek. Though the spill was first discovered in 1978, the areas around the creek are low income and industrial and there are no visual indicators the property is sitting on millions of gallons of oil.
The creek has only recently been put on the radar screen, primarily because of groups such as the Newtown Creek Alliance and the environmental group Riverkeeper.
The oil is only one part of the problem. Compounding the situation is a city sewer system which processes rain water from the city’s streets along with sewage. In what’s known as combined sewage overflow, both storm water runoff and raw sewage are dumped into the surrounding waterways when the sewage treatment plants get full.
According to Riverkeeper, there are 20 CSO pipes along Newtown Creek alone. An estimated 10 percent of the city’s CSO winds up in the creek, totaling 3.2 billion gallons a year.
Clinton now joins Congressmembers Anthony Wiener (D-Queens and Brooklyn), and Nydia Velazquez (D-Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan), in requesting the site be tested.
Regardless of whether the federal government gets involved, there may be some hope for the creek and its surrounding communities, due to the efforts of the civic and environmental groups.
Two major grants were awarded this year that could help: in March, several groups, including Riverkeeper, were jointly awarded a state-funded $625,000 Brownfield Opportunities Area grant; and in April, the state Department of Environmental Conservation and partner groups received a $326,000 federal forestry grant to research ways of reducing CSOs.
The creek was originally a natural waterway. Its location and calm waters made it a perfect spot for settlement, making Maspeth the first European settlement in Queens.
The creek was the home of America’s oldest modern oil refinery, assembled by John D. Rockefeller, head of Standard Oil, in 1902. Standard Oil, which later became Exxon (and eventually ExxonMobil), continued to refine oil on the banks of Newtown Creek for decades before being phased out entirely by the early 1990s.
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