[CPEO-BIF] Gowanus Canal (Brooklyn, NY) responsible parties

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

A Score Of Companies Could Share Bill For Gowanus Cleanup
The Brooklyn canal's Superfund designation has triggered a hunt for the 
corporations responsible for more than a century of pollution.

By Kieran K. Meadows and Mike Reicher
City Limits (NY)
July 15, 2010


Gowanus - For nearly six decades, Vivian Scarpati has lived within 
blocks of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. In the 1970s, she married a man 
who lived on her street. Her husband's family had lived a block east of 
the Canal—for four generations.

The Gowanus had long been a heavily polluted industrial area. The Canal 
was created in the 1860s to bring raw material to rapidly developing 
residential Brooklyn. Within years, toxic waste was in the water and on 
its banks. As early as the 1880s, local residents protested the 
contamination, sewage overflows and foul odors. A massive 1976 fire at 
the Patchogue Oil Terminal destroyed underground fuel tanks and resulted 
in more than 2.5 million gallons of oil spilling into the Canal—at the 
time, one of the largest oil spills in the nation's history.

...

In recent months, the EPA sent more than 20 letters notifying other 
companies that they may be on the hook to pay for the cleanup. These 
companies include: Amerada Hess Corporation, Bayside Fuel Oil Depot 
Corp., Rapid American Corp., Cibro Petroleum Products, Inc., Beazer 
East, Brink's, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and ExxonMobil. Even the U.S. 
Navy received a letter due to some WWII activity at the canal. And more 
recently, Kraft Foods and Citigroup received letters.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4108/a-score-of-companies-could-share-bill-for-gowanus-cleanup

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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