Water towers are kind of gross

From City and State:

Despite years of reforms, new data reveal widespread neglect in the thousands of weathered wooden water tanks that supply drinking water to millions of New York City residents. A review of city records indicates that most building owners still do not inspect and clean their tanks as the law has required for years, even after revisions to the health and administrative codes that now mandate annual filings.

There are still many thousands of water tanks across the city for which there is no information at all. The city can’t even say with certainty how many there are or where they are located, much less their condition – even well-maintained water tanks accumulate layers of muck and bacterial slime.

Building owners who do self-report the condition of their water tanks provide suspiciously spotless descriptions on annual inspection reports. These reports include bacteriological test results, but in almost every case the tests are conducted only after the tanks have been disinfected, making it a meaningless metric for determining the typical quality of a building’s drinking water. And regulators have issued dramatically fewer violations in recent years.

The data show that the city reported drinking water tanks on municipal buildings, including the city sanitation offices and several court buildings, tested positive for E. coli, a marker used by public health experts to predict the presence of potentially dangerous viruses and bacteria. Oversight remains lax: It took health officials more than a year to investigate several isolated reports of E. coli in drinking water tanks. After inquiries from City & State, however, officials now say that their own reports were erroneous.

But scientists at the federal Environmental Protection Agency and public health experts consulted by City & State warned that animals can easily get into New York City’s water tanks, that mucky sediments inside the tanks may contain pathogens and that poorly maintained water tanks could be the source of disease outbreaks.

Why it's important to research history

From the NY Times:

since 2015, most of the Red Hook fields have been closed because of lead contamination in the soil. A $107 million cleanup by the New York City parks department has been delayed, leaving residents, coaches and parents anxious and confused.

“We need our fields back,” Mr. Bazemore said. “But safe.”

Problems started in 2012 when the parks department and the city’s health department learned of a dissertation by an environmental scientist who identified close to 500 lead-smelting sites around the country. One of the smelters once stood in Red Hook, right across the street from the housing projects and right on top of some of the playing fields.

In the late 1920s and ’30s, Columbia Smelting and Refining Works operated on the corner of Hicks and Lorraine Streets, leaving lead in the soil that would eventually become Fields 5, 6, 7 and 8 — the same fields that Mr. Bazemore and generations of children once played on. The parks department and the health department tested the soil in 2012, finding lead levels four times the safe limit on the surface and nearly 10 times the limit further underground. They quickly closed them. A concrete pad to guard against the lead was laid down. The fields and grass were hydroseeded.

In 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency did further testing in the surrounding fields and found more elevated lead levels, causing Parks to close the fields for a four-phase cleanup that has yet to begin.

Work was set to start this spring on Fields 5 through 8 — the worst of the bunch and closest to the housing projects — but has now been pushed back a year because of delays in the construction bidding process. A contractor is now being approved and work should be completed by fall 2020, when a 12-inch buffer of clean fill will be topped by a drainage layer and then synthetic turf.

Just think what we could avoid if the city consulted historians once in a while. Or at least looked at old maps...

Businesses evicted from Superfund site

From DNA Info:

The auto parts company that Albert Rodriguez built up over the last 20 years on Irving Avenue will soon be gone — for his own good, according to federal regulators.

His garage, Primo Auto Parts and Services, and six other businesses sit on the radioactive remains of the Wolff-Alport Chemical Company, a property stewed in carcinogenic toxins.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that all the tenants in this industrial corner of Queens must leave to allow the agency to remediate the site.

Business owners were caught by surprise by the announcement and left wondering what they're going to do next.

The agency has budgeted $1,112,500 to help move the tenants, according to the EPA's report on the remediation released Tuesday, but it has not given specifics on how the money will be spent or when the businesses will be evicted.

The business owners first got wind that they might have to move off the site permanently at a public meeting in August where the EPA presented four different plans, including one that would let them stay on site and another that would allow them to leave temporarily and return after remediation.

"I thought there was some chance we could stay," Rodriguez said in Spanish. He had left the meeting hopeful that he'd still be able to save his businesses.

The .75-acre site operated as a chemical company from the 1920s until 1954, according to the EPA. Wolff-Alport imported radioactive monazite sand from the Belgian Congo and used the factory to extract rare earth metals like uranium and thorium.

The EPA believes the toxins were dumped in the sewers and buried there.

Calamus calamity

From QNS:

Maspeth and Woodside residents have been angered over months of delays in the reconstruction of sewers under Calamus Avenue and 69th Street — and they were even more upset on Thursday night, when they learned the project’s completion is still 15 months away.

Nearly 50 concerned residents of the effected neighborhoods filled the parish hall of St. Mary’s of Winfield on Thursday night to hear why the Calamus Avenue Sewer Project — which has left Calamus Avenue and the surrounding areas a virtual mine field of potholes and craters, detoured the Q47 bus for nearly three years, and been a headache for anyone trying to commute in the area — has yet to move forward.

Ali Mallick, assistant commissioner for the Department of Design and Construction (DDC) North Queens Construction, clarified what documents weren’t accurate and why that was such a major problem for the project. The delays have pushed back the projected completion of the project to May of 2018.

“When I took over about a year ago, I found out that this project was dead, nothing was happening on the project,” Mallick said. “And there were problems with the design due to some unforeseen conditions in the ground because the drawings that we had did not match what was in the ground, so we had to do a major redesign with the work.”

Understanding the communities’ frustrations, Mallick and the DDC are looking at ways to work with the contractor to have the workers expand their work day and even work on some weekends to hopefully expedite the construction process and get the job done before the end of this year.

Other members of the DDC, Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Department of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were on hand to listen and respond to the residents’ concerns.

Noticeably absent from the meeting was a representative from the MTA. Several of the local elected officials reached out to the MTA, alerting them of the meeting and asking them to send a representative.

Meng wants the EPA to take over plane noise issue

From DNA Info:

A lawmaker wants a federal environmental agency to take over efforts to fight airplane noise because the current overseer is "doing virtually nothing" to deal with it.

U.S. Rep. Grace Meng first introduced legislation in July that calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to take over work being done to mitigate noise in neighborhoods close to airports.

She's been vocal about the EPA stepping up its monitoring of noise for months, but now wants it to take over the whole process, currently handled by the Federal Aviation Administration.

"The FAA has failed the residents of Queens," she said, adding that the EPA is "better suited to handle the problem."

Her bill, the Quiet Communities Act of 2015, would bring back the EPA's Office of Noise Abatement and Control — which monitored noise issues until President Ronald Reagan defunded it in 1981, Meng said.

Airplane noise in Queens isn't new, the congresswoman pointed out.

But it's gotten worse since 2012, when the FAA implemented new flight paths.

Realtor pushing for hotel by Newtown Creek

From the Queens Courier:

Today Newtown Creek stands as one of the “nation’s most polluted waterways,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as a result of industrial contamination from nearby factories and raw sewage dumping that dates back to the 1800s.

But listed as a Superfund site since 2010 and with an ongoing remedial process, brokers at Greiner-Maltz Investment Properties are marketing a site across from a section of the infamously contaminated body of water that could be in high demand after the grimy, toxic 3.8 mile creek is cleaned up.

The site sits at the edge of Ridgewood near the border of East Williamsburg and Maspeth to the north. It begins where Metropolitan and Onderdonk avenues intersect, and is surrounded by various factories in the neighborhood.

An existing 4,225-square-foot building with the address 46-00 Metropolitan Ave. is on the site, which is being used as an auto junk yard. The property has up to 40,720 square feet of buildable space zoned for manufacturing, but an investor could redevelop it into a hotel with — views of the now-mucky creek — brokers said.

See that off-color section of water? That's poop, folks.

Artificial turf may cause childhood cancer

From CBS 2:

CBS2 first reported last January on concerns over artificial turf playing fields being a potential danger to kids.

Now in a CBS2 investigation, Carolyn Gusoff has found these fields may be linked to a growing number of cancer cases in young athletes.

Experts said the bad things in question include a number of chemicals.

“We know some of these chemicals do cause cancer,” said Dr. Robert Cohen of Northwestern Medicine.

Now, the issue is building steam — from New Jersey to Long Island and even New York City, where there are hundreds of similar fields.

“These are many years that children are playing on this surface, and they’re growing up on this surface, and now, we’re seeing throughout the country these cancer clusters,” said New York City Parks Advocates President Geoffrey Croft.

Croft said he has been petitioning the city to remove the 200-plus crumb rubber fields currently in local parks.

But the Synthetic Turf Council, which represents the companies that make the fields, insists the substance is safe. They cited 60 studies.

One of the studies cited was conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which examined four crumb rubber fields in 2009 and found that harmful chemicals were “below levels of concern.”

But Long Island U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said the EPA study is in adequate.

“Common sense tells us that four fields is not an adequate sample in an entire country,” he said.

Israel insisted that the agency should do more testing.

“The only way we’re going to know whether these fields are truly safe or unsafe is for the EPA to get its act together, and update the study, and let the American people know so that they can make their own judgments,” Israel said.

In a statement, the EPA acknowledged its original study was limited, and that more testing needs to be done. But the agency did not commit to doing it.

Tappan Zee project may put NYC up sh*t's creek

From Capital New York:

In an unusual exchange of roles, the federal government is warning the state against a possible diversion of infrastructure funding from the city, while the New York City mayor is unconcerned.

Historically the E.P.A. has sent money to the state's Environmental Facilities Corporation, which then distributes that money in the form of low-interest loans to local governments, “primarily to build or upgrade wastewater treatment systems,” according to Enck. Then the municipalities repay the loans and replenish the fund.

In New York City's case, that money would go to the Municipal Water Finance Authority, the self-sufficient public authority that finances water and sewer capital projects with water usage fees and federal and state funds, some administered by the New York's Environmental Facilities Corporation.

Last year, the city used $317 million in Environmental Facilities Corporation funding, and it anticipates using $300 million a year over the next three years, according to Rahul Jain, a Citizens Budget Commission researcher. That, presumably, is how the E.P.A. got to $900 million.

(The E.P.A. responded to all questions with a statement promising to work with New York State to "ensure that all Clean Water State Revolving Fund spending is consistent with federal law.")

In a move that has rattled environmentalists and good-government advocates concerned about the state's and city's billions in unmet wastewater treatment needs, Cuomo recommended, and the authority he effectively controls agreed, that $511 million of that federal money should instead go toward projects related to his $4 billion replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Two more state-controlled authorities still have to approve the loan.

Radioactive Ridgewood!

From WPIX:

A block in Queens has earned the title of the most radioactive area of New York City and it has many residents worried.

The property on Irving Avenue in Ridgewood once belonged to a chemical company until the late 1950s.

Now there’s an auto body shop, an ice making facility, a construction company, and a deli.

The EPA has put out a warning for the body shop workers and residents who use the sidewalks saying they have a higher risk of cancer.

The feds have laid a new concrete floor in the auto shop.

Last fall, the EPA proposed adding that neighborhood to the list of federal Superfund sites.

The agency is trying to decide what to do about the area.

Yesterday, they decided in favor of Superfund designation.

Ridgewood site to be added to Superfund list

From the Daily News:

A Ridgewood building in which chemists once developed materials for the Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Project is on tap to become the third Superfund site in New York City.

Radioactive contamination still lingers around the former Wolff-Alport Chemical Co. on Irving Ave., which shuttered in the early 1950s. The property now houses several businesses including a deli and auto body shop.

To reduce exposure, the Environmental Protection Agency has conducted regular testing and installed shielding material under the floors and the sidewalk, said Judith Enck, a regional administrator for the agency.

Ridgewood site may be Superfund eligible

From the NY Times:

City, state and federal agencies have long known that an industrial site in Ridgewood, Queens, contained radioactive material. The location, currently home to an auto repair shop, a construction firm, a warehouse and a deli, was once used by the Wolff-Alport Chemical Company, which sold thorium to the federal government for research on atomic bombs.

Until recently, officials considered the contamination level low enough not to be of concern. But over time, regulations changed, and inspectors began making repeat visits to the site, conducting surveys of radiation levels. The latest comprehensive federal study, released in February 2012, found levels significant enough to conclude that “workers at the auto body shop and pedestrians who frequently use the sidewalks at this location may have an elevated risk of cancer.”

With that, the site will soon be considered for Superfund status, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

The Wolff-Alport Chemical Company was, for three decades, a supplier of rare earth metals, the agency said in its report. The company dumped thorium and some uranium into the sewer system as waste byproducts until 1947, when the Atomic Energy Commission, the successor of the Manhattan Project, began buying thorium for research, according to government documents.

Stephen I. Schwartz, editor of the The Nonproliferation Review, a journal on nuclear weapons, said the Manhattan Project and ensuing research left contamination sites around the country, but most fall under the Department of Energy’s purview and have been addressed. A sprawling site in Hanford, Wash., is still under remediation.

In Queens, the owners of the auto repair shop and the construction firm said no mention of the possible radioactive contamination was made when they began renting their spaces. The auto repair shop moved in 14 years ago; the construction firm moved in six years ago.

The nondescript building sits along the border with Bushwick, Brooklyn, near Long Island Rail Road tracks. Residential homes line nearby streets, and a day care center and a public school sit two blocks away. An agency representative said these locations did not show high levels of radiation.

Concern over cleanup under the "Queensway"

From the Queens Courier:

The cleanup of polluted soil in Ozone Park has some residents worried toxic chemicals have spread throughout the neighborhood.

End Zone Industries will begin a long-awaited project to remove just a few inches of tainted soil from under eight storage bays under the abandoned Rockaway Beach LIRR line. The bays are between 101st and 103rd Avenues, from north to south, and 99th to 100th Streets, east to west.

Company representatives briefed Community Board 9 about the project at its April 9 meeting – with some board members upset about the project.

...concerns over a spread chemical, Trichloroethylene (TCE), business disruption and other concerns had board members skeptical about the project. TCE is an organic chemical that’s been used in cleaning solvents, paint thinner and pepper spray, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Vincent Evangelista, whose podiatry office is nearby the cleanup, expressed concern over the TCE-tainted brown water about 30 feet under the surface. Evangelista asked Austin and End Zone representatives if the contaminated soil, deemed by End Zone to be non-hazardous, immediately stopped outside of the allotted bays.

Austin acknowledged the soil could have spread to other parts of the neighborhood, but most of it has not been tested.

“There’s always unknowns when you dig underground and into dirt,” he said.

Contaminated Whitestone soil came from Brooklyn

From the Times Ledger:

Months after a state agency fined two companies working on a brownfield site in Whitestone for importing unauthorized soil onto the property where a high-end residential development is planned, TimesLedger Newspapers has learned that some of the soil in question came from a former Superfund site.

The property in question is called Waterpointe, a proposed development of expensive homes near the corner of 6th Road and 151st Place.

...well before Edgestone acquired the property, additional soil was dumped on top of the DEC-approved material under Barone and EBI’s watch. This eventually led the agency to fine the two companies a total of $150,000, half of which will be nixed if the problems are corrected, and prompted a cleanup of the unauthorized material. Some of that material included soil from a former electroplating facility in Brooklyn, Gordon said Tuesday night.

Documents obtained from the DEC via a Freedom of Information Law request showed that the soil she was referring to came from 154 N. 7th St. in Brooklyn.

That is the same address where in 1997 a company called All Plating Corp. was abandoned and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency later cleaned up leaking hazardous materials under its Superfund program, according to the EPA. A Superfund site is a hazardous waste site that poses harm to surrounding communities and is cleaned up under the EPA.

In two instances, Barone told TimesLedger Newspapers that the fine from DEC and subsequent required cleanup were due to a paperwork error. In essence, Barone Management and EBI did not do enough testing on the material it brought in to satisfy DEC requirements, he said.

A new environmental company overseeing the site estimated that removing the unauthorized material would take between weeks and months and would cost at least about $500,000.

Brownfields not actually tested post-Sandy

From the NY Post:

For more than a month, the Environmental Protection Agency has said Hurricane Sandy did not cause significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic-waste sites it’s monitoring in New York and New Jersey.

But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water — just visual inspections — are being conducted.

The EPA conducted a few tests right after the storm, but a spokesman couldn’t provide details or locations of any recent testing when asked last week.

The 1980 Superfund law gave the EPA the power to order cleanups of abandoned, spilled and illegally dumped hazardous wastes, such as the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

“The EPA and the state of New Jersey have not done due diligence to make sure these sites have not created problems,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey.

A little radon never hurt anyone

From DNA Info:

A past atomic bomb project site is finally receiving government attention to protect current workers and nearby residents after decades of elevated radiation levels at the building.

The former site of Wolff-Alport Chemical Company — which includes a giant warehouse that currently houses an auto-body shop and construction company and an abandoned lot — has been contaminated with the radioactive element thorium since the 1930s, government officials said. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency started to work on shielding the site on the Ridgewood-Bushwick border.

"We just got a referral from the state to perform shielding Aug. 31," said Eric Daly, the EPA's on-scene coordinator at Wolff-Alport, a site at 1125 — 1139 Irving Ave., where the city has known of radioactivity since it did a study in 2007.

A 2009 EPA survey determined there was “no immediate risk to people, but that more evaluation was needed,” the agency’s spokeswoman Mary Mears said.

Some work done by Wolff-Alport was performed under contract to the Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Project, a research and development program that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II, according to EPA documents. The company, which operated from the 1920s to 1954, imported monazite sand on a railroad spur behind the facility. Wolff-Alport processed the monazite to extract rare earth elements, leaving thorium and to a lesser degree uranium byproducts, according to the EPA.

"These waste byproducts were disposed of into a nearby sewer and other wastes may have been buried onsite," according to an EPA document released last month.

The EPA, the city’s Department of Health, the state’s Department of Health, and the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation all were unable to explain why the EPA is taking sudden action at the site.

Queens gets cleaner trains

From the Forum:

Two of the diesel engines that run on tracks cutting through Middle Village, Ridgewood and Glendale will get a state-of-the-art,low-emissions upgrade by 2013.

Thanks to a grant from Environmental Protection Agency’s National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program, New York will get $2 million to upgrade the engines operating out of the Fresh Pond Terminal railyard in Glendale.

The EPA, New York City Economic Development Corporation, New York City Department of Sanitation, and New YorkCity Department of Small Business Services made the announcement on Dec. 13.

These locomotives will remain in the freightrail network and will be transformed in partnership with CSX Transportation and the joint work of the New York & Atlantic Railwayand Waste Management of New York.

The upgrade replaces each conventional diesel engine with several smaller generators that can be activated when the locomotive is working at full power and deactivated when their power is not needed.

EPA officials say these two conversionswill save an estimated 31,000 gallons of fuel each year and remove an expected 32 tons ofnitrogen oxides and 0.64 tons of particulate matter from the air annually. Removing 32 tons of nitrogen oxides from the air is the equivalent of taking more than 4,300 personal automobiles off of the road each year.

City must pay part of Newtown Creek Superfund settlement

Hipsters on houseboats

From the NY Post:

A group of intrepid Brooklynites have spent at least a year living on four houseboats moored on the ultra-toxic Gowanus Canal, where they’ve been floating under the radar of city agencies that monitor safety regulations.

A recent study by the US Environmental Protection Agency -- which is overseeing a $500 million Superfund cleanup of the 1.8-mile canal -- has warned boaters not to fall in because the waterway is a cancer-causing cesspool.

Three of the houseboats, occupied by hipster 20-somethings, are docked behind a truck lot off President and Bond streets. Neighbors said they’re known for late-night canal parties and pretty girls sunbathing on the decks.

While the boaters have docking permission from property owners, the floating homes still must pass city Buildings and Fire department safety inspections to be considered legal.

One top city official said it’s “highly unlikely” the city would allow houseboats on the Gowanus, adding the residents could face fines for docking “illegally.”

EPA coming to a school near you

From the Daily News:

The Environmental Protection Agency released new guidelines for schools grappling with older light fixtures contaminated by a cancer-causing toxin.

The recommendations announced Thursday are for schools handling and removing lights laden with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

The action comes on the heels of a Bronx mom's 2009 lawsuit against the city Department of Education over the cleanup of high PCB levels in her children's Co-op City school.

Steve Owens, EPA's assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, said in a statement that as the EPA learned more about PCB risks in older buildings, it would work closely with schools to make sure they were safe.

The EPA wants the city to remove the lights in about 800 schools in an "expedited time frame," but the city says the lights pose no immediate health risks and removing them would cost more than $1 billion.

The EPA is set to begin testing city classrooms for PCB contamination next month.

In 1979, the EPA banned PCBs, which were used in electrical resistors to control lights and have been linked to cancer, birth defects and learning difficulties.

City Education officials declined to comment yesterday, but a letter sent to the EPA by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott last week scolded the agency for singling out the city, when buildings across the country contain PCB-contaminated lights.

Officials request inclusion of Queens in Creek study

From the NY Times:

Newtown Creek, the heavily polluted waterway recently chosen for a federal Superfund cleanup, equally burdens Queens and Brooklyn because it straddles both boroughs. But several Queens officials have written to the Environmental Protection Agency to make sure the agency doesn’t play favorites.

The officials, including Representative Carolyn B. Maloney and the Queens borough president, Helen Marshall, assert that the E.P.A. has primarily focused on the Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek in studies and sampling of the waterway. They say that the agency has taken no samples in Newtown Creek’s Queens tributaries, including Dutch Kills, Maspeth Creek and East Branch.

In fact, they complain that the E.P.A. listed Newtown Creek as being only in Brooklyn in a fact sheet.

“While Newtown Creek borders both Brooklyn and Queens, up to now most of the E.P.A.’s attention has been on the Brooklyn side of the creek,” the officials wrote in a letter sent on Friday to the agency’s administrator, Lisa Jackson. “That has to change. Time after time, Queens has simply been forgotten — literally omitted from the studies, the documentation and the E.P.A.’s attention.”

In a statement, E.P.A. officials said that all five tributaries of the creek — Dutch Kills, Whale Creek, Maspeth Creek, East Branch and English Kills — are officially part of the Newtown Creek Superfund site.

“They are all included in the plan for sampling the water and sediment that is currently being developed by the agency,” the E.P.A. said. “Throughout our sampling, investigation and clean-up, we will work closely with the communities along the creek and share information with officials and the public regularly.”