A message from the Newtown Creek Alliance:

Attention Residents of Greenpoint, East Williamsburg, and Maspeth:

Are you worried about health problems caused by the pollution in your neighborhood?
Would you like the opportunity to tell your story?

If yes, then you may want to be interviewed for a community health project that aims to document the public health concerns of individuals residing in communities along Newtown Creek in NYC. The study will be conducted by a collaborative team from the Urban Public Health Department of Hunter College/CUNY, HabitatMap, and the Newtown Creek Alliance.

Participation will provide you with an opportunity to have your story documented in your own words. With your permission, the information you disclose will be displayed in written and audio format on a website (www.habitatmap.org) and in a report that will be disseminated to community members, media outlets, elected officials, and other interested parties.

Community involvement is important, make your voice heard!

If you have any questions or are interested in participating, please attend the following info session:

Tuesday, June 16th at 7PM
Lutheran Church of the Messiah
129 Russell St. (b/w Driggs Ave. and Nassau Ave.)
Brooklyn, NY 11222

For more information, contact us at:
newtowncreekstudy@gmail.com or (718) 577-1359

Newtown Creek Community Health & Harm Narratives Project (CHHNP)

The City Concealed: Newtown Creek from Thirteen.org.

Newtown Creek is featured in the first episode of Thirteen.org’s new online series The City Concealed.

The creek runs a full 3.5 miles, bisecting Brooklyn and Queens. Most people barely know it exists. So what happens there, how did it become so overlooked, and was it always this way?

What we found was both beautiful and grotesque, heartening and depressing.

About the series:

The City Concealed, an online video series exploring the unseen corners of New York. Visit the places you don’t know exist, locations you can’t get into, or maybe don’t even want to. Each installment unearths New York’s rich history in the city’s hidden remains and overlooked spaces.

Go to Thirteen’s blog on the series to learn more, discuss, and keep an eye out for new episodes.

There have been other documentaries that have looked at the Newtown Creek oil disaster, such as Thirteen’s New York Voices program and VBS’s Toxic Brooklyn.

Go to GBK’s Newtown Creek category to read more posts about this on-going struggle for a responsible end to the environmental problems at the creek and some of the green solutions that have been proposed.

The 2008 Environmental Justice Community Impact Grants are in. Some of the projects funded by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation include: community gardens and green roofs, air- and water-quality monitoring, lead poisoning prevention, urban forestry, subsistence fishing education, environmental education for urban youth, inventories of local pollution sources, and an international climate justice conference.

The 12 Brooklyn organizations — including some of our favorite friends — won a combined total of $357,669 in grants. Congrats to all!

Here is the list of winning Brooklyn orgs and the projects funded:

• Added Value – Brooklyn - $25,000 – for construction of a rain water capture system for a community garden to reduce the garden’s ecological footprint, along with community education to promote rainwater capture and use.
• Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation – Brooklyn - $25,000 – for partnership with Pratt Center for Community Development to reduce energy consumption by providing: (1) free energy audits and energy conservation education to low-income residents; and (2) job training and apprenticeship opportunities in energy retrofits.
• Brooklyn Art Incubator, Inc. – Brooklyn - $24,800 – for community residents to develop ways to improve local air quality, followed by construction of a community garden and other green infrastructure at the Magnolia Tree Earth Center.
• Going Coastal, Inc. – Brooklyn - $22,400 – for a survey of subsistence anglers’ knowledge and attitudes about fish health advisories, research into health advisories and fish contamination, and education of anglers.
• The Newtown Creek Alliance – Brooklyn and Queens - $46,041 - for health-based interviews of community residents, with results presented in a unique internet GIS interactive map.
• OUTRAGE - Brooklyn - $47,000 – for a community-based study of environmental and public health hazards from local solid waste facilities and attendant truck traffic, with community education and development of mitigation proposals based on the results.
• Phoenix Community Garden – Brooklyn - $22,000 – to expand operations of a 19,000-square-foot community garden and outdoor environmental education center.
• Prospect Park Alliance – Brooklyn - $25,000 – for a summer ecological research camp for inner-city Brooklyn youth at the Rheinstrom Hill Audubon Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in Hillsdale, Columbia County.
• Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation – Brooklyn - $25,000 – for renovation of an abandoned building into a green community arts and cultural center with environmental education programs.
• United Community Centers, Inc. – Brooklyn - $24,415 – for development of sustainable systems and community education programs for two urban farms and a farmers’ market.
• UPROSE, Inc. – Brooklyn - $46,013 – for a study of local air pollution and related health effects and other environmental burdens, followed by environmental education tours of Sunset Park.
• Wildlife Conservation Society – Brooklyn - $25,000 – for a partnership with the New York City Aquarium to provide training and job opportunities for inner-city teens as aquarium docents and interns and to engage the participants in hands-on stream conservation projects.

For the complete list of winners throughout the state, go here (pdf)

Go here for the grant announcement at NYS DEC.

Go here to read more about the grant program and how to apply for next year’s grant.

What is Environmental Justice?

Environmental justice is defined as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

Environmental justice efforts focus on improving the environment in communities, specifically minority and low-income communities, and addressing disproportionate adverse environmental impacts that may exist in those communities.

Click here to read more and for resources on this important topic.

Some good — albeit slightly shocking — news from New York State Department of Environmental Conservation:

New York State and NYC have announced a “landmark agreement” for Newtown Creek and other sewage treatment plants, including “improved performance” and community benefits.

The news release speaks highly of fundamental changes to several sewage, wastewater, and CSO projects and plants. Upon reading it, I was struck by two common threads that define the landmark agreement: compliance with environmental law and settlement over payment of violation fines.

But is this what makes up a landmark deal? Catching up to current (read: outdated) environmental law? It is shocking to me. What other environmental laws do the city and/or state ignore or bypass? What other sums of money from environmental violations have gone unpaid?

The environmental benefits component of the deal — consisting of $10 million in outlays to the City Parks Foundation, NYSERDA, and the Hudson River Foundation — is promising, and a settlement of this sort must have required many late nights between negotiating staffs… but please forgive me if I don’t find cause for celebration in achieving compliance with existing laws or settlement between two massive, cumbersome bureaucracies.

If nothing else, this type of quid-pro-quo agreement smacks more of old-style, 20th-century thinking rather than the pro-active, forward-thinking, long-term problem solving that is required to move towards a truly improved city waste system.

It certainly — in my view — doesn’t address the crux of the PlaNYC 2030 storm water plan. Nor does it address advocacy for progressive action towards a sustainable solution to the city-wide CSO problems by coalitions such as Storm Water Infrastructure Matters (S.W.I.M.) and Newtown Creek Alliance.

As the city and state engage in these partnerships and settlements, it is beholden upon us — the taxpayers — to make sure they are doing right by us, and to investigate and publicize any grievances or failures on the part of our city and state governments.

Speaking of Newtown Creek… The Newtown Creek Alliance notifies us of an availability session on November 12th dealing with plumes of contamination discovered under Meeker Avenue.

To catch up on this latest environmental remediation action, check out the very informative fact sheet (pdf) from the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and the NYS Department of Health — the two orgs leading the availability session.

The plumes are the result of decades of dumping and irresponsible manufacturing practices by historic and contemporary drycleaning, dyeing, and metalworking businesses. Long story short: out of the hundreds of homes that are potentially impacted by hazardous chemicals, only 12 have been tested by the DEC.

For more information about the plumes and the action to clean them up, go here.

For an interactive map of the affected region, go to Habitatmap map for the Meeker Ave. Contaminant Plumes. Click on the flags for more information about each location and possible contaminants released.

More info on the availability session:

Where:
St. Cecilia’s School
1 Monitor St., Brooklyn, NY

When:
Wednesday, November 12th
2:00pm - 5:00pm & 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Why:
“Representatives from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) will be on hand to answer questions about the site and the recent investigation results, and to provide one-on-one meetings to discuss an individual property owner’s sampling results. Those living in the vicinity of the Meeker Avenue Plume Trackdown site are encouraged to attend.”

This image comes to us from Laura Hoffman of Greenpoint fame.

Photo was taken during the September 14th cruise of Newtown Creek.

Read more about the worst oil disaster in U.S. history — an oil spill twice the size of the Exxon Valdez sitting under Brooklyn — at the Newtown Creek category on GBK.

Have you contacted your local and national politicians about this yet? Join hundreds of advocates who have pressed our politicians to make the Newtown Creek oil spill a federal issue.