Sustaining Us

After reading about the oil spills in the Black Sea and Russia’s attempt at immediate remediation of the surrounding areas, I remembered an article from this summer. In New York Magazine, I learned of an enormous oil spill that resides just under Greenpoint, Brooklyn. This oil spill is different however, in its composition, and source. It’s estimated that 17 to 30 million gallons of oil are spilled in and around Greenpoint, but it’s not just oil, and it didn’t happen all at once. In a slow methodical industrial process, chemicals like Perchloroethylene (Dry Cleaning Carcinogen), Benzene (multi-purpose toxic chemical), naphtha (broad spectrum chemical notorious as an ingredient of napalm), currently found in the area, were spilled, expelled, or otherwise neglected in industrial accidents in the late 19th century. The article reminds me that the industrialized past includes an unfortunate legacy that is unbeknownst to many. If you venture to read this article in New York Magazine, I think you’ll be surprised at the prevalence of the chemicals in the area, and the almost complete lack of outcry until recently. An excerpt below…

in 2005, Riverkeeper [and environmental advocacy group] drilled a test hole in industrial Greenpoint and analyzed the soil itself. They found dirt so polluted with methane and benzene that had they dug it out with a shovel and tossed it on the ground, they could have been found guilty of the illegal dumping of toxic waste.”

We find ourselves the victim of our own success in many cases, discovering potent chemicals without knowing much about their respective legacies. Just miles from where I grew up, Burnt Fly Bog, was an area where waste oil was reprocessed. It’s legacy landed it on the EPA’s SuperFund list, where millions of dollars were used to restore the property and protect the potable water table.

So what’s the point of this post? The point is that this is a tremendous opportunity. I’ve written before about brownfield (polluted site) remediation. In particular, I mentioned Cherokee Investments as a partnership capitalizing on available resources and incentives to redevelop “badlands”. With the economy in flux and so much uncertainty is it so far fetched to foresee a New Deal based upon the Greening of America? With the economy coming under the burden of increased energy prices at the same time our dollar depreciates abroad, domestic improvements seem like a real possibility. We have the opportunity to take one of the unfortunate legacies from our industrial past and turn it into the fodder of our clean, green future.

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