A Superfund site that stretches between the areas of Greenpoint and East Williamsburg has considerably polluted the ground in the area, and could potentially pollute the air to a dangerous point, leaving countless residents and properties at risk.
The Meeker Avenue Plume, which was first discovered in 2005, spans approximately 45 city blocks and is the product of toxic chemicals left by local dry cleaners, foundries, and metalworking shops.
In 2022, the EPA designated the stretch of properties as a federal Superfund site.
Last week, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detailed their plans to address the Meeker Ave Plume at a public meeting. Reportedly, they have a $1 million proposal to measure and control toxins that may have “potentially impacted” more than 1,000 Brooklyn properties in East Williamsburg and Greenpoint for decades.
Yet as officials outlined the first steps of the cleanup that could lead to the removal of some of the underground contaminants, some residents expressed concerns about what years of possible exposure to the chemicals would mean for their health in the long term.
“The state has known that there is a potential threat for nearly 20 years, but the people who are being exposed haven’t known what their exposure might be,“ said Willis Elkins, executive director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, a community group that has long advocated for cleaning up the plume. “That’s like an entire childhood, you know, someone growing up, living in a building with potential exposures, and not knowing.”
According to the EPA, approximately 100 properties will require some form of mitigation to vent vapors out or block them from entering, which would involve sealing up cracks or gaps in basements, or installing a “sub-slab depressurization system” with an electric fan that blows vapors up and out of the structure above ground.
Officials said the first steps of their proposed plan, which is expected to take five years, will focus on assessing the extent of poisonous vapors and quickly tackling sites that present an imminent risk to public health.
Though the EPA has taken efforts to alert residents and property owners in the plume’s vicinity of the possible dangers, persuading landlords to open their properties up to inspectors is still an issue, meaning federal officials may need to get a court order to access certain buildings. Meanwhile, various residents who don’t run properties have concerns with being left out of the loop.
The main sources of pollution in the Meeker Avenue Plume are the cancer-causing chemicals trichloroethylene, or TCE, and tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, according to the EPA.
