newtown creek

Newtown Creek is a disaster area.

As you slowly move east down this dividing line between Brooklyn and Queens, the environmental nightmare slowly unfolds. Starting with rusty factory after dilapidated building, the waterfront pilings and bulkheads (that form a man-made bank) scream pollution. Covered in slick, black sludge, the brown water laps against these unnatural shores. As the factories and abandoned buildings give way, metal recycling and heavy industry begin to dot the shore.

Then you enter the “gasoline zone” where the stench pervades everything, and a thin, rainbow-inducing film lies along the water’s surface. Large tanks and pipes run along the shoreline, and the smell and taste of gasoline eventually enters your mouth.

However, you miss that smell after you round the bend and sail into a cesspool of raw sewage. The stench is overwhelming and nauseating. It is reminiscent of burnt rotten eggs mixed with phosphorus. Human feces and trash float along the surface, and the water here has changed from the green-brown at the beginning of the creek to a clear, milky substance. We are warned not to touch the water with our bare hands, and medical gloves are passed out to those attempting to pull up samples for observation and investigation.

As we moved further down the river, it is those river samples that show just how bad the water becomes. Dissolved oxygen in the water (which is what is needed for life) has dropped from 5mg per liter (the bare minimum for fish to survive) at the creek’s mouth to 3 mg near the “gasoline zone” to 0 at the cesspool. Just ask any of the kids from the East River Apprenticeshop (ERAShop) who are taking the samples and recording the results. This is their sixth outing on Newtown Creek, and their first with the Riverkeeper.

ERAShop “brings the Outward Bound-idea to the city,” explained Executive Director Anthony Francis. New York City, after all, is surrounded by water on all sides, and ERAShop attempts to connect city kids with that water. “It builds interest in the water around us, it builds knowledge about how this water is treated by humans, and it instills an environmentally-minded citizenry concept in the kids,” he said.

Riverkeeper is a non-profit organization that patrols the waterways of the Hudson estuary looking for polluters. It is a neighborhood watch on water, if you will. The organization has been around for over 35 years, and since 1983 has investigated and brought to justice more than 300 environmental lawbreakers. It works with ERAShop as part of the Newtown Creek Alliance, an organization devoted to cleaning and preserving the creek.

The kids in ERAShop – mainly 9th grade age and mainly from Brooklyn schools – come for six weeks in the summer to learn about water, navigating boats, and local ecosystems. They place traps in the water, measure pH, salinity, and oxygen levels, observe the wildlife along the water, and see pollution and its effects firsthand. Newtown Creek is one of their most frequented locales since it is “isolated” from the much-more trafficked East and Hudson Rivers. Ironically, it is because of this relative isolation that it is so polluted.

Originally called Maspeth (“at the bad water place”) by Native Americans, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy when it became a heavily industrialized waterway in the 1800’s; mostly used for shipbuilding until the booming oil industry took over. It was the site of the country’s first kerosene refinery, and the first oil refinery in the world before the 1870’s. It was also where Standard Oil had its tanks; which, after its break-up, became the tanks of Mobil, Exxon, Gulf, Texaco, and Socal – which are still there today.

The runoff from these “oil fields” is obvious to the naked eye today. A thin film covers the water, and floating barriers to contain spills run along much of the shoreline. According to the Riverkeeper, Newtown Creek is also home to the world’s largest underground oil spill, which was discovered in 1950: 17 million gallons. That’s 7 million more than the Valdez disaster.

The cesspool towards the end of the creek is the result of several factors. One of the main reasons is sewer run-off. When it rains, sewers overflow, and the city will simply dump untreated water right into the creek. Raw sewage, with trash, sludge, human waste, everything and anything, will just skip the wastewater treatment plant. The catch is that only half an inch of rain is necessary for the sewers to overflow. This summer has not been good to the local waterway.

Another reason for the incredibly diseased state of the creek is that it has no outlet and no influx of clean water to flush it out. The eastern terminus historically was marshlands, but that has been cemented over. The only way for water to get out is to the East River. But tides don’t necessarily reach the whole 3.5 miles to its end to bring out the pollution. However, enough does get out to cause concern: 12 percent of the pollutants in Newtown Creek end up in the Hudson River.

And these pollutants are not limited to merely gasoline and sewage. This creek has every bad thing you can imagine floating around in it: dioxins, PCPs, heavy metals, toxins, and every sort of bacteria (including e.coli) or chemical you can think of.

The kids from ERAShop know all too well what is in this river as they have traveled it this summer. When we first started off, I observed, “Well, it doesn’t look too bad yet.” Immediately, they said in unison, “No way.” The state government has declared Newtown Creek as “precluded” for aquatic life – the most severe designation. There is no swimming here, and contact with human skin is considered not favorable.

During the trip, the kids would eagerly point out the pollution that was obvious and any new violations they saw. As discouraging as the scene was, the kids kept their optimism. “This can be cleaned up. It is not a lost battle,” Akiele responded to my concerns.

Putting these kids in the thick of it, exposing them to what is happening to our environment, the methods to stop it, and letting them firsthand see the effects might just be the right avenue and best hope for us all. They are now seeing how everything affects everything else and how to start making that effect a positive one.