New York, NY —

The Newtown Creek, which forms part of the border between Brooklyn and Queens, is one of the nation’s most polluted waterways. It’s filled with toxins from a century and a half of industrial activity. It’s the site of a huge underground oil spill that’s been causing problems in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for decades. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed making the Newtown a national priority for cleanup by putting the creek on its so-called Superfund list. WNYC’s Brian Zumhagen has this report.

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Kate Zidar, an environmental planner with the Newtown Creek Alliance, is looking out on a tributary of the Newtown called the Maspeth Creek in Queens. She says it’s not a pretty picture:

"The bulkheads are crumbling, there’s a car upended, there’s, you know, kind of mysterious things afloat. In the harbor, if you put something in there, those waterways are flushed regularly. In Newtown Creek, especially up here, stuff stays put, and it gets into the sediments, and it compounds this issue of historic pollution here."

That long-standing pollution is what’s at the center of the Superfund proposal, which is in the middle of a public comment period that’s been extended until December 23. If Newtown makes the national priorities list, the EPA would start with extensive sampling of sediment. Walter Mugdan, director of the Superfund division for the New York region, says the agency already did sampling earlier this year and found contamination in just about every part of the creek.

"We found some kinds of metals, copper and zinc in particular, contaminants that are associated with, for example, manufactured gas plant sites but also with asphalt plants and other kinds of operations. We found PCBs," Mugdan says.

Five of the big companies who acknowledge their role in the pollution -- ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, Chevron Texaco, Phelps Dodge, and National Grid -- have approached the EPA with offers to pay for the sampling that would follow a Superfund designation. After that, Mugdan says, officials would decide whether to dredge the contaminated sediment.

"And then the question is how much of it you dredge, and what do you do after you’ve dredged. Choices really are: You dredge a little bit and then cover that over with clean material, or you dig much more deeply and try and get out the contamination out as far and as deep as it goes," he says.

Mugdan says it would likely cost more than $400 million, which would be covered mostly by the polluters…along with some taxpayer money that Congress allocates for Superfund sites. The cleanup would take at least 15 years. That time frame is a concern for some of the industries that currently do business along the Newtown.

"Hi, I’m Gene Pullo, I’m CEO of Metro. We’ll be up into production in March 2010 with our 110-million-gallon biodiesel production facility on Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn!"

Metro Fuels is a family business that started distributing heating oil more than 60 years ago as an alternative to coal. Now the company says the wave of the future is biodiesel made from various waste products. Pullo is excited about providing businesses, landlords, and city agency vehicle fleets with cleaner-burning fuel. But he’s less enthusiastic about the possibility of a Superfund designation for the Newtown.

"We feel that the stigma will hurt businesses," Pullo says. "That will really prevent them from getting financing, or devalue the property that’s a major asset. So unless the government comes in and guarantees that it’s not going to have a negative impact, we don’t see the need for it."

Pullo has been raising his concerns at public meetings called by the EPA, and he’s also met with city officials. The Bloomberg administration hasn’t taken a position on this Superfund proposal yet. By contrast, the mayor has come out strongly against a similar proposal for Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, where developers want to build luxury housing.

Still, the city does have some development plans on the Newtown, from rezoning in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and the city’s acquisition of land in Queens for the residential community Hunters Point South. Cas Holloway is a mayoral advisor who was recently appointed commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.

"One of the key issues we have, we want to be able, for all this work, which is so important for the continued economic revitalization of the area and the development of the communities there, to be able to move forward, no matter what happens with the listing," Holloway says.

But while the city and businesses are worried that a Newtown Superfund listing could create too many restrictions, environmentalists point out that any EPA cleanup would itself be restricted because Superfund would cover only the sediment and shoreline and would not deal with the quality of the water itself -– or with the human waste that gets into the creek every time it rains and city sewers overflow. That’s where Riverkeeper comes in:

The group regularly patrols the Newtown, taking samples and posting the data online. The boat’s captain, John Lipscomb, says government figures claiming that New York's rivers are cleaner only show average water quality; what actually matters, he says, is the conditions at specific locations. He says that information is especially important now, because more and more people are getting access to the Newtown, thanks to new ladders and a shoreline stairway on the nature trail at the Wastewater Treatment Plant.

"We’re going from the bad old days to a hopeful future, where we’re inviting people to the water," Lipscomb says. "But we don’t have the information that the public really needs to make an educated decision on whether they’re gonna fish there, whether they’re gonna eat that fish, whether they’re gonna climb down that ladder and get in the water."

The Clean Water laws of the 1970s envisioned that American waterways would be fishable by the '80s…but the Newtown Creek is far from that point. As for the second goal, swimmable, that’s not really part of anyone’s vocabulary when it comes to the Newtown, according to environmental planner Kate Zidar. But just as she’s telling me this, something floats into view, and it’s not a discarded tire.

"This is a cormorant! The creek is not so dead. This isn’t a sob story. Luckily we live in an estuary, which is an ecosystem that is extremely resilient. With a little collaboration from the humans around here, we could really think big for Newtown Creek."

And that means keeping the waterway a haven for industrial jobs… just a less toxic one. Zidar says there are things the state, city, community groups, and businesses can do now, without having to wait for the EPA. She says more street trees, green rooftops, and permeable pavement would absorb more storm water, so it doesn’t all flow into the sewers, carrying toxins with it and forcing overflows of raw sewage.

The city does have a tax credit for green roofs and a requirement that new parking lots have landscaped areas. The state Department of Environmental Conservation has imposed a consent order that requires the city to complete several sewer improvement projects around town at a cost of $2 billion. But that amount is just a drop in the bucket, if you’ll pardon the expression. City officials have determined that the kind of overhaul necessary to stop sewer overflows into waterways like the Newtown Creek would cost at least $58 billion.