Brooklyn, NY – The big oil companies left most of the Brooklyn waterfront decades ago, but the industry’s legacy still bubbles to the surface.
Beneath the industrial yards and townhouses of Brooklyn’s Greenpoint section lies a vast underground oil slick that, at one time, covered an area as big as 41 football fields and contained more petroleum than the Exxon Valdez spilled off the Alaskan coast.
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The stuff oozes into a concrete-lined canal known as the Newtown Creek, and some of it makes its way into the East River, leaving an oily sheen. Also, residents complain of an oily smell in their basements after heavy rains.
Refineries left the stuff behind during more than a century along the waterfront, and the cleanup has been painfully slow. More than half of the 17-million-gallon spill is still thought to be in the ground.
A number of Greenpoint families say their patience has run out, and more than 20 people are suing.