Newtown Creek

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Newtown Creek , a 3.5 kilometer tributary in the East River, is an estuary that forms part of the border between the Brooklyn and Queens districts of New York City. Channelization makes it one of the most widely used water bodies in the Ports of New York and New Jersey and thus one of the most polluted industrial sites in the US, containing toxins dumped for years, some 30,000,000 US gallons (110 million l; 25,000,000 impÃ,reg) spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from the New York City sewer system, and other accumulations of a total of 1,491 locations

Newtown Creek was proposed as a potential Superfund site in September 2009, and received the appointment on September 27, 2010.

Video Newtown Creek

Course Edit

The creek starts near the intersection of 47th Street and Grand Avenue on the Brooklyn-Queens border at the crossroads of East Branch and English Kills. It boils down to East River on 2nd Street and 54th Avenue in Long Island City, across from Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan on 26th Street. The flour, and its tributaries Dutch Kills Whale Creek , Maspeth Creek and English Kills , are heavily industriized.

Because the surrounded environment is completely drifted by the current, the creek has only a small amount of natural freshwater flow. The US 14 billion gallons (53,000,000 m ³ ) outflow per year comprises combined sewage drains, urban runoff, raw domestic waste, and industrial wastewater. The river is mostly flooded, one cause is a 15 foot (4.6 m) thick layer (in some places 25 feet (7.6 m)) of contaminated mud that has been frozen in the river bed.

The Montauk Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, only used for western goods delivery from Jamaica, runs along the northern edge.

Maps Newtown Creek

History Edit

This river gets its name from New Town (Nieuwe Stad), which is the name for the Dutch and British settlements in what is now named Elmhurst, Queens. Prior to the urbanization and industrialization of the nineteenth century from the surrounding environment, Newtown Creek was a longer and shallow tidal path, large enough that there were islands, including Mussel Island. It drains parts of what is now a Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint neighborhood; and Maspeth, Ridgewood, Sunnyside, and Long Island City in Queens.

During the American Revolution, British General Warren had his headquarters along the creek. Sackett's house was inherited by DeWitt Clinton's wife, and Clinton lived there for much of the Erie Canal project planning. The apple called Newtown Pippins came from the Gershom Moore plantation there, and soon had a wide reputation, appeared in the "Select List" apple issue by the London Horticultural Society, and drew praise Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Queen Victoria, who, after tasting the fruit, revoke import tax on apple.

Industrialization Edit

Farmers used the creek to extinguish their goods to market in the early nineteenth century, but river traffic increased dramatically as petroleum from Pennsylvania was sent to rivers to facilities that once extracted oil from coal. More refineries have sprung up, including Robert Chesebrough to make petroleum jelly, marketed as Vaseline. There was only one refinery in Queens in 1860, but the demand for kerosene and other oil products increased dramatically, all of which required a lot of land for storage and processing, as well as pipelines for transporting products. John D. Rockefeller decided that Standard Oil would be based in the Newtown Creek area, and immediately began purchasing rival refineries, until in the 1880s the company processed 3,000,000 US gallons (11,000,000, 2,500,000 impÃ,reg) weekly crude oil, employing two thousand people in over 100 of their stills.

Pastoral land around the creek becomes "a vast complex of docks, stills, tanks, and pipes," to serve not only refineries but also related industrial facilities such as paint and varnish manufacturers, and chemical companies that produce sulfuric acid. It is estimated that, in all these industrial facilities produce 300,000 gallons of US (1,100,000 liters, 250,000 impÃ, gal) of waste materials each week, which are burned, or discharged into the air or river water. Wastes include sludge acid, tar-like substances that are sold to companies that use them as superfosphate fertilizers. These companies, which build factories close to their raw material sources, then dump their wastes into the environment, as well as chemical companies with sulfur which are a waste of producing sulfuric acid.

Currently, Newtown Creek has become a major industrial waterway, with the city beginning to dispose of the raw wastes into it in 1866. It is limited throughout most of its length by maintaining walls, and the shipping channels are managed by dredging. Public protests over the degradation of waterways and surrounding areas, and newspaper exposure often do little to fix the problem, given the economic benefits of the industry located along the river and nearby. Queens is not yet a part of New York City, which means that the city's Health Council has no jurisdiction there, and the Brooklyn Health Council sides with the polluters in court. Even a report from The New York Times in 1885 that Standard Oil dumped mud acid into the river, covering banks at low tide, made little difference. In the late nineteenth century, The Times reported that the river really did not have any form of life.

The oil industry is based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Across the river, in Laurel Hill, or Maspeth West, Queens, the chemical plant and copper smelting facility do their part in the fouling water. At its peak, Laurel Hill Chemical Works, owned by Phelps Dodge, employs about 1,250 people, but the workforce declined when the company closed the smelter, and eventually the site was sold to the US Post Office in 1986. When the USPS found an unacceptable level from heavy metal waste from the smelting process, the US Attorney's office forced Phelps Dodge to cancel the sale, take back the property, and clean it, which, by 2016, has not been done.

Prior to 1950, a large oil storage facility near the corner of Manhattan Avenue and Huron Street spilled oil in ever more quantities than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The underground explosion in the same corner adds to the problem. BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil have since released half the spill, about 12,000,000 US gallons (45,000,000; 10,000,000 gallons), from rivers and surrounding areas, selling removed oil.

In 1973, the Peter van Iderstine factory that had changed the meat-cutting site and at least one 10-ton elephant into fertilizer, animal feed, and glue since 1855 was accused of contaminating a river with animal fat. The factory closed two years later but the smell of burning animals continues to persist.

In 1978, a US Coast Guard helicopter on a routine patrol found a Greenpoint oil spill, a discharge that lasted another 30 years and spilled a total of three times the oil spill of Exxon Valdez oil.

In the early 2000s, during the construction boom, the construction company dumped concrete slurry into the river. The city fined the Empire Transit Mix in 2005 for cleansing itself of its porridge through a secret pipeline. Disposal of some other companies has the same pH level as household ammonia.

Clean Edit

The first steps to clean up Newtown Creek's toxic environment occurred in 1924, when the federal government inserted the image with oil contamination laws, albeit one that the industry had weakened as it passed through Congress.

Then, in 1967, the city built the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is now the largest sewage treatment facility operated by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Located on the south bank near the mouth of the creek at Greenpoint, this factory handles most of the drainage from the East Side of Manhattan. Waste from the Financial District, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Midtown East and the East Side to 71st Street flowed through 180 miles (290 km) of sewer pipes to the interceptor pipeline to Thirteenth Street Pumping Station on 13th Street and Avenue D, sent under the East River to the factory. The normal entry is 120,000,000 US gallons (450,000,000, 100,000,000 per day) per day, which increases to 120,000,000 US gallons (450,000,000 lit; 100,000,000 gal) during wet weather. When there was significant overflow during the 1977 New York City blackout (828 million gallons US) (3.13 ÃÆ' - 10 ⁹ Ã,6; gal9.000.000 gal? to the East River), the federal government ordered in 1995 that the city built a back-up facility, yet the Northeast outburst of 2003 produced 145,000,000 US gallons (550,000,000, 120,000,000 gal) of raw sewage spilled.

In 1998, the city began its program to expand its facilities. Construction is completed in 2014, and the plant remains open during the renovation process. The extraordinary plant aesthetics, especially the 140-foot (42-meter) metallic "digester" egg that is illuminated at night with blue light, makes it a local landmark. Partly to pacify the environmentalists who initially opposed the expansion of the plant, New York City built a natural road with Newtown Creek just outside the factory boundary in 2009. Later, the North Brooklyn Boat Club built a shipyard and educational center with funds from the Exxon Settlement with the state to allow access to the river.

Even with the expansion of the plant, by 2014, the city still does not fully comply with the 1972 federal Water Act, which mandates that secondary care should eliminate 85% of pollutants from incoming waste, or by order from the State of New York in 1992 for cities to prevent overflow in 2013. The abundance of the Newtown Creek mill on the order of 100,000,000 US gallons (380,000,000, 83,000,000 gal) occurs on average once a week. When that happens

When the dirt load exceeds the capacity of Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility, garbage, pesticides, petroleum products, PCBs, mercury, cadmium, lead, pathogenic microorganisms, and nutrients that reduce the dissolved oxygen content of water is discharged to Newtown Creek. This disposal is referred to as a combined sewer or CSO. CSOs can be triggered by as little as one rain. Basically anything that was washed into a ditch from the street, whatever the households and businesses in the toilets dispose of or dumped into the sewer, has a fair chance to be issued straight to Newtown Creek or New York Harbor without treatment. In New York City, CSO events occur on average once a week, spending about 500 million gallons of raw dirt directly to New York Harbor. CSO is the biggest disruption to New York City water quality.

The city is requesting a postponement of the 2013 deadline by considering its plans to build a fully qualified Newtown Creek plant by 2022.

In 2007, residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and the New York Attorney General's Office filed a lawsuit related to the Greenpoint oil spill. On September 27, 2010, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency designated Newtown Creek as the Superfund site, preparing the road for the evaluation and improvement of the river environment. Environmental advocacy groups support the decision.

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Water quality Edit

Although wastewater treatment plants have been expanded, even a small amount of rainfall can overwhelm the system and lead to the disposal of raw sewage and runoff directly into rivers from 23 different locations. This combined sewage channel contributes to the ongoing river pollution. The margin between rainfall and waste overflows only thinning with the further development of the city. In addition, it was reported in December 2013 that in addition to oil and human waste, EPA crews are expected to find toxic substances such as arsenic, cesium-137, and polychlorinated biphenyls.

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Bridge Edit

Newtown Creek was crossed by the Pulaski Bridge (replacing the 1950s Vernon Avenue Bridge), J. J.Rehrne Memorial Bridge or Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, and the Kosciuszko Bridge, which carries the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Several bridges across it and its tributaries are named for the road they carry, such as the Grand Street Bridge and Metropolitan Avenue Bridge.

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See also Edit

• Arthur Kill (Staten Island)
• Geography of New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary
• Gowanus Channel
• Hunter, Queens

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References Edit

Note

Bibliography

• Eldredge, Niles & amp; Horenstein, Sidney (2014). Concrete Forest: New York City and Our Last Hope for a Sustainable Future . Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-27015-2.

Further reading

• Video: explore the wasted banks of Newtown Creek
• N.Y. Times: Between Queens and Brooklyn, Legacy Oil Spill
• PBS: P.O.V. Borders: The Invisible Creek
• Forgotten New York - Take a boat down Newtown Creek - photos and history

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External links Edit

• Newtown Creek Alliance, a community-based organization
• Riverkeeper
• Newtown Creek Advisory Group - updated information on EPA assessment and cleaning
• Greenpoint v. Exxon
• Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning

Source of the article : Wikipedia