Public Employee Press

Meet with Congressman on Newtown Creek health concerns

Brooklyn’s once rundown Greenpoint area is burgeoning now as its waterfront views attract a new generation. Greenpoint sounds lush and inviting, but it’s been embroiled in oil since 1950 when a giant spill flooded the neighborhood with 17 million gallons of oil.

According to Riverkeeper, the non-profit environmental group headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “The spill courses beneath 52 acres of property. Petroleum continuously leaks into Newtown Creek and then out to the East River.”

Riverkeeper initiated a lawsuit against the corporate polluters ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco that was settled in 1990 with a consent decree.

MTA recently relocated about 400 employees, many of them members of MTA Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1655, from a building about one quarter mile away to a new site on the creek.

Riverkeeper says there are no data indicating immediate health problems, but the union members want to know what they are breathing and what the long-term effects on their health might be in decades to come.

A union group met Feb. 27 with U.S. Congress member Anthony D. Weiner, who represents the neighborhoods affected by the spill. In September 2005, Weiner sponsored federal legislation that mandates a report from the Coast Guard on Newtown Creek.

The union team included Local 1655 President Kevin Smith, DC 37 Political Action Director Wanda Williams and Safety and Health Director Lee Clarke.

In the meeting, Weiner urged members to stay calm and agreed to initiate further health studies of the area as the next necessary step in finding answers to the questions that the members are raising. The MTA is setting up a task force to study the site and others, “and the union will be included,” said DC 37 White Collar Division Director Sherwyn Britton.