Newtown Creek Brownfield
Opportunity Area Community-driven Planning and Redevelopment Project for Newtown Creek
Newtown Creek, a tributary of the East River, separates the communities of Long Island City and West Maspeth in Queens from Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. One of the most polluted waterways in North America, Newtown Creek is adjacent to six state Superfund sites and dozens of other contaminated properties. It is also the site of 17-million gallon oil spill covering 55 acres which dates back to the 1950s, one of the largest in history. In 2008, the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center, Riverkeeper and the Newtown Creek Alliance received an award of $625,454 in New York State Brownfield Opportunity Areas (“BOA”) funding for a community-driven planning and redevelopment analysis of Newtown Creek and surrounding contaminated sites in Queens and Brooklyn.
Funds will be used to assess redevelopment opportunities for contaminated sites along the creek pursuant to intensive community input, emphasizing high-performance, environmentally sustainable industrial uses, parks and wetlands reclamation, and improved environmental infrastructure. The study will examine the watershed as a whole in an effort to improve the environmental condition of the land and water.
“Our main goal is to encourage redevelopment and support the industrial nature of the communities around the creek,” says Brian Coleman. “We hope our efforts lead to the cleanup of contaminated sites and bring them back to use. We are using the community planning process to generate interest in and a new understanding of the creek, its assets, community needs, and shared goals and opportunities.”
The BOA program, created in 2003 in conjunction with the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program, is an innovative planning program that provides communities with financial assistance to facilitate the collection of basic information about an area blighted with brownfields. The program provides assistance to identify, prepare, create, develop, and assemble information to be included in an application to nominate an area as a BOA. The program also provides financial assistance for site assessments performed in designated BOAs.
Designation of an area as a BOA can provide other benefits. For example, projects located within the BOA can receive priority and preference when considered for financial assistance under some state, federal, or local programs, and may receive preference in infrastructure improvements. A BOA designation is likely to help attract redevelopment interest because of the community support that underlies a BOA plan.
The Newtown Creek BOA initiative has the strong support of our elected officials at the federal, state, and local level:
“Newtown Creek has suffered enough, as the site of our nation’s largest oil spill and the victim of decades of neglect. I strongly support the Greenpoint community in their efforts to revitalize the waterway and I am confident that in the hands of these dedicated groups the state funding will go far toward achieving real improvements.”congresswoman nydia m. velázquez
“I am sure that this will have an enormous positive impact on our community and on the environment as a whole. I look forward to working with these groups to improve our neighborhood and our waterways.”new york state assemblyman joseph lentol
“Thanks to the collective, we take a major step closer to a waterfront that is the pride of Brooklyn—and not a terrible reminder of the negligence of big oil.”brooklyn borough president marty markowitz
“The Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center, Riverkeeper and the Newtown Creek Alliance have begun to transform one of New York’s most polluted waterway, and are poised to lay out a bold vision for a cleaner creek and more vibrant communities.”new york city council member david yassky