Contaminated Sites

For years, Riverkeeper has been sounding wake-up calls to government officials and environmental policy makers about former industrial sites that are now toxic wastelands. This year, GE began dredging PCBs from the Hudson River, while in Brooklyn the Gowanus Canal was proposed for the Federal Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) and the Environmental Protection Agency began to study Newtown Creek for a possible Superfund listing as well. We are encouraged, but our work has just begun. The amount of clean-up these sites require is enormous, and it is already meeting resistance, which is why we need citizens like you to support us by contacting your local legislators and urging them to insist on ongoing and thorough remediation.

• Hudson River PCBs

  In Brief:

  Although General Electric has finally started dredging the Hudson River, it faces an enormous task: trying to remove the estimated 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) it dumped into the river for 30 years.
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• The Greenpoint Oil Spill

  In Brief:

  One of the world’s largest underground oil spills — at least 6 million gallons larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska — lurks beneath the shores of Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, thanks to ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and other oil companies. The approximate 17-million-gallon, 55-acre spill, the result of neglected leaks in the 1940s and 1950s, slowly migrated under the community and into the creek.
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• Gowanus Canal

  In Brief:

  The Gowanus Canal, located in Brooklyn, NY is one of the most heavily contaminated water bodies in the nation. Formerly home to manufactured gas plants, cement factories, oil refineries, tanneries, and chemical plants, the 150-year-old, 1.8 mile canal remains loaded with PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, sewage solids from combined sewer overflows, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and is a candidate for the Federal Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). Learn More