50-Year Oil Spill Lingers in Brooklyn

[Joanne98]

Run time: 06:42 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agR2_kwMYro   Posted on YouTube: June 14, 2010 By YouTube Member: CleanSkiesNews Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 14, 2010 By DU Member: Joanne98 Views on DU: 671

 
June 14, 2010 — Until the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, this was the largest oil spill in U.S. History. It took several decades to happen, and even longer to clean up. It's the oil spill that sent by some EPA estimates more than 30 million gallons of crude and petro-chemicals underneath the streets in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. Clean Skies Lee Patrick Sullivan went to the streets of Brooklyn to check on the on going clean up of this massive spill.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Thank you for posting this.

[Joanne98]

2. You're welcome

[The_Commonist]

3. I live a short walk from there...

...in Williamsburg.

That oil-covered pelican would be walking down Manhattan Ave, not Flatbush!

[SirRevolutionary]

4. Hung out in Greenpoint daily for many years

I didn't realize it was quite that bad. Sheesh! Good info.

[Optimistic]

5. Wow, Never knew this

My Mom and Dad grew up there and lived there till 1954, Never heard about this

[KurtNYC]

6. There are backyards full of grapes, apples, figs, and other

fruits that were planted by Italian immigrants -- lush, dripping with grapes as big as your thumb -- and you can't eat any of it because the tap roots go down to the polluted ground water.

Cancer rate far above average too:

Exxon Mobil conducted a soil vapor study in Greenpoint. It took ten samples from a residential area; of five samples that detected benzene, one was from an area above the oil plume at a level below 5.4 parts per billion. The EPA estimates that breathing just 0.4 parts per billion of benzene in air over a lifetime could cause a risk of one additional cancer case for every 100,000 people exposed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpoint_oil_spill