Greenpoint

Last Wednesday, July 22, I met Nina at the Nassau Avenue G train station. We started off down Nassau and were lured by the bright shine of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant to turn down Monitor Street. Looking an amazing aerial photo from 1954 of the area I found on the Newtown Creek Alliance website, Monitor Street would have run right through Mobil’s Oil Refinery. So why isn’t this defined as brownfield?

We walked down Greenpoint Avenue and saw the Water Pollution Control Plant construction and some of the recycling activity. Paper. Metal. Then we walked back and over the JJ Byrne Bridge. The images can’t convey how deafening the truck traffic is.

Petroleum still has a visible presence.

As does just the old waterfront.

Then we walked back down Kingsland past the ExxonMobil “Greenpoint Remediation Project.” This I guess is the center of the huge spill in Greenpoint. From the bridge, the site looks completely innocuous.

315 Kingsland Avenue is the address of the former Spic and Span Cleaners and Dryers which is in the State Superfund program. TETRACHLOROETHYLENE (PCE). The site is part of the Meeker Avenue plume.

Williamsburg/Greenpoint

I started this morning under the BQE. Between Metropolitan and Union Avenues along Meeker is a State Superfund site. The NYSDEC website states that debris from the Ansbacher Color & Dye Factory, which was at North 7th and Union, was used as fill under the roadway. I haven’t been able yet to find the footprint of this factory though I looked last week at the old maps at the Brooklyn Historical Society but I did learn that Paris Green, copper(II)-acetoarsenite, was made there on the Brooklyn page of Colorantshistory.org.
Looking out from under the BQE towards where I guess the factory would have been.

Under the BQE between Metropolitan and Union.

The next site, 291, 285 Metropolitan is under review for the Brownfield Cleanup Program. It appears to be an ordinary auto repair. This brings up the very important issue of what sites become designated brownfield sites. There are manufactured gas plants in Brooklyn that are not on the list. So why this auto repair?

Next, I walked over to the Williamsburg Works site. The remedial investigation is visible. On the north portion of the block, something was set up to take a deep underground sample. Men were working a hose down into the machine when I was there. There were new small piles of dirt in spots around the lot since I visited the site last month.

There is also a great view of Bayside Oil from 13th Street.

There was a gas holder on 13th street as well. There is now a pallet company there now.

Then I went up to West Street to try to find a site that theoretically has been remediated. I could not find the site right away. 101-105 West Street is supposed to be between Kent and Java on the West side of the street. According to the NYSDEC database, it is a construction material storage yard but from what I observed today there are two buildings on this block. It actually must be between Kent and Greenpoint Avenue. it is now boarded off with plywood.

March 27th – Greenpoint

I started at my least favorite place in Brooklyn: Maspeth Avenue.

Equity Works
At the corner of Vandervort, there is a site that was a MGP and is now a recycling facility. A line of trucks waits outside to dump their loads. I felt very intimidated and didn’t try to shoot.

Greenpoint MGP
Across the street is a huge site that was also a MGP. It is largely empty though there appears to be a baseball field on the site and on the far end, the Greenpoint Little League has its field. I asked the owner of Brooklyn Rebar which is across the street if I could go up into his two story building to get a better view of the site.

ACME Steel Metal Works
The building at 72 Lombardy Street goes through the whole block. The site is contaminated with trichloroethene (TCE) a chemical used to degrease metal.

Meeker Avenue
I also walked to the end of Meeker Avenue at the Newtown Creek. a foul filthy spot yet you couldn’t tell at least the day I was there that there is both a huge quantity of petroleum spilled underground in this area as well as a plume of other chemicals that were usd in metal manufacturing and dry cleaning.