Excerpts from Newtown Creek Community Planning
Workshop
February 3, 2000
PART 3
“I’ve
lived in [Greenpoint] for 42 years, in the same building on
the same corner. And my involvement has been with the terrible
pollution in that area. There was this old plastic part company
that was on DuPont Street, right across the street from the
parochial school. And I thought, what is that stench? What
is that awful smell? So I kind of went around from here to
there and from there to here, and made them put up some pollution
counters on the roofs. That was my first edge in trying to
protect our community. The next problem was with the fact
that Hartan Company wanted to take over some of the buildings
in the area to expand and I went to City Hall and I kind of
bitched again. I said, wait a minute, we have so much industry
here, so much manufacturing, do we need any more? No one is
telling the City to do away with the manufacturing that’s
here. But please, because of the pollution, do not add anymore
heavy industries to the area. And so they changed that zoning
from M3 to M3-1, which is a very small plus, but it was something
for the benefit of the community again. And I raised four
children here and my grandchildren in the neighborhood. And
I would certainly like to see a reversal of all the pollution
problems that we have here. And one of the big issues is the
Mobil Oil spill which is also polluting the Creek still! There
are still pools in the Creek that are collecting the leakage
and the seepage of the oil from the Mobil Oil spill. That
was in the ‘40s.”
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“The
Creek was noticed by the Coast Guard recently. I had the opportunity
to work on the natural history, and one of the officers who
happened to be there at one of our round tables brought up
the fact that there’s still seepage in the Creek. And we said
whoa, wait a minute, let’s talk about this and when are we
going to see it stop? I mean it just continued, it never stopped.
So that’s why I say that it should be our goal to see that
it is cleaned up. Particularly because it is a federal body
of water. And why should we continue to live with the stench?
In fact the New York City Health Department did a study on
our area and said clearly that we have a very large percentage
of cancer of the breast, cancer of the stomach, leukemia,
and” --
--“I
have to break in here. I can give you a copy of this study,
and in fact the contrary is stated in the study. It shows
that Greenpoint has one of the lowest levels of cancer in
all of New York City and the clusters happen to be in areas
of Williamsburg and Bushwick. If you would like me to et the
study now, I’ll go over” –
--“I
know an awful lot of people in Greenpoint with cancer.”
--“I
have friends and relatives who have had their breasts removed,
and heart conditions and open heart surgery, and it has to
do with the air quality. So we have cumulative problems.”
“The
area of the Mobil spill is on the other side of Greenpoint
Avenue. There was a leak in 1978: two million gallons on top
of the other one. The original was between 14 and 17 million
gallons, and they’ve been able to clean some, but [not much].”
--“Oh,
yeah, they have recovery wells all along.”
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“I’ve
lived in Maspeth for 17 years, grew up in Queens. Not to insult
your area, but growing up over the Kosciusko Bridge, as a
child I just dreaded, what was it, Berkowitz Fat. My father
used to tell me this is where they melt the horses. The stench
was unbelievable, I mean it was always backed up with traffic
and you dreaded being stuck in traffic over Newtown Creek.
So to me it was just the odor. Newtown Creek was always a
joke. When I moved to Maspeth in 1983 – my interests are marine
and railway history – nobody even knew that DeWitt Clinton
lived along the Creek. Did you know? And the library, I went
to the Maspeth library and asked for any books on DeWitt Clinton,
and they said “who?” I said he lived in Maspeth, he designed
the Erie Canal while he was living in Maspeth, which no one
knew. I’ve done tours of the Creek and people from my own
neighborhood don’t even know it’s there. They can’t believe
there’s that much room. I’ve taken pictures, there’s a video
coming out. The Creek existed to drain most of western Queens
– it was much bigger. Once they [filled] it in, it stopped
flowing. And that’s when it started to smell. So my main interests
are historical, I run 4 cruises, we spend three hours and
if I get enough interest, I’ll do another one.”
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