We are often asked why one of the biggest oil spills in North America, in the heart of its biggest city, could have festered for so long without meaningful attention. The answer is as unfortunate as it is simple: few people cared about working class Greenpoint or the polluted Newtown Creek. The Greenpoint Oil Spill is a story of environmental injustice. The Greenpoint Oil Spill is also a story of fighting back. It’s a story of how ordinary citizens can use our precious environmental laws to bring massive, hostile companies to justice and force intractable government agencies to operate in the public interest. In the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Mobil finally signed a legal agreement requiring basic remediation. But the agreement failed to define any minimum standard for cleanup, allowing Mobil to use its own discretion on how to cleanup the creek. The agreement also made no provisions for cleaning the contaminated soils and sands beneath the surface. Mobil was not required to pay a single penny in penalties for the spill or compensation to the community for its devastated natural resources. In 2004, Hudson Riverkeeper and six community activists filed a lawsuit to force ExxonMobil to fully and aggressively clean up the spill. Two City Council members, the Brooklyn Borough President and, more recently, two state assemblymen and a state senator, joined us in the case. The case is still in the discovery phase of litigation. Based in part on Riverkeeper’s investigations, several hundred homeowners above the spill, aided by activist Erin Brockovich, filed private lawsuits to force a cleanup. Riverkeeper’s advocacy then helped convince Congress to require an intensive EPA study of the spill. In 2006, New York State, which for many years had been shielding ExxonMobil, changed its tune dramatically. State environmental officials referred the case to the Office of the Attorney General for enforcement. Attorney General Cuomo filed his notice of intent to sue ExxonMobil and other companies almost immediately after taking office this January. The spill continues to threaten the environment and the communities around Newtown Creek. For over half a century, petroleum has poisoned the water and earth beneath Brooklyn. The spill has stolen the community’s natural resources, fouled its drinking water and endangered its health. None of the oil companies have taken responsible action. The story is still being written on this catastrophe, and Riverkeeper will not stop until the last chapter rewrites the over 50 years of pollution, corruption and environmental injustice impinged upon this tiny creek in the heart of one of America’s finest working class neighborhoods. w 46
Waterkeeper Magazine Summer 2007
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
oil & water
Refineries By Brendan DeMelle
»Oil refineries turn oil into an assortment of more
than 2,500 commercial petroleum products. The refining process involves everything from boiling and filtering to solvents and additives to turn crude oil into products from gasoline and diesel to jet fuel and asphalt for paving roads. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are 149 petroleum refineries in the United States operating in 33 states, and over 700 operating worldwide. An average-sized facility refines around four million gallons of crude oil every day. In the process, refineries release more than 11,000 gallons of oil into our air, water and groundwater each day. That figure doesn’t account for oil spilled accidentally or chemical byproduct pollution such as benzene and naphthalene, acid rain-producing sulfur dioxide or smog-forming particulates. Nor does it consider thermal pollution — the discharge of warm effluent into surrounding waterways — which threatens fish and aquatic ecosystems. In the 2002 study Oil: A Life Cycle Analysis of its Health and Environmental Impacts, Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment noted that the refining and transportation of oil account for “46 percent of the estimated 3.2 million tons of oil entering the oceans each year.” Refinery pollution doesn’t just impact the environment. It poses serious threats to human health, affecting the young and the elderly most severely. The same Harvard Medical School study www.waterkeeper.org
