[CPEO-BIF] "Meeker Avenue Plume becomes NYC’s fourth Superfund site" (Brooklyn, NY)

[Lenny Siegel]

Meeker Avenue Plume becomes NYC’s fourth Superfund site

BY NATHAN KENSINGER
Gothamist (NY)
MARCH 18, 2022

The Meeker Avenue Plume in Brooklyn has been added to the Superfund National Priorities List, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week — making it New York City’s fourth federal Superfund site.

The plume is an underground reservoir of toxic chemicals found beneath the streets of northern Brooklyn, mostly in Greenpoint and East Williamsburg. First discovered in 2005, its footprint encompasses about 45 blocks of residential, commercial and industrial properties, including hundreds of homes and apartment buildings. The pollution in the plume came from local dry cleaning businesses, foundries and metalworking shops — and has seeped into the soil and groundwater, according to the EPA.

With this new Superfund designation, a full investigation of the Meeker Avenue Plume will now take place, using the extensive resources of the EPA’s Superfund program. This program seeks to remediate the most polluted sites in the United States, which pose a serious risk to human health.

…

For the entire article, see
https://gothamist.com/news/meeker-avenue-plume-becomes-nycs-fourth-superfund-site

It’s hard to believe it was so long ago, but I visited and wrote about this site in 2009. See
http://www.cpeo.org/pubs/GreenpointPlumes.pdf

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel at cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)