Common Dreams / Published on Wednesday, January 3, 2007 by BloombergMatthew Leising
The biggest oil spill Exxon Mobil Corp. has to answer for isn't the cargo that gushed from the Exxon Valdez tanker into Alaska's Prince William Sound. It's the fuel soaked into the ground beneath a working class section of Brooklyn, New York.
The pressure is rising on Exxon Mobil to expand its cleanup of oil that seeped into the soil over many decades in the Greenpoint neighborhood. The New York State attorney general's office is threatening legal action, and two suits in the past year seek billions of dollars for alleged damage to property values and possible health risks.
In the late 1800s, the area housed more than 50 refineries, and the contamination may have begun then, Exxon Mobil says. By 1892, most of the facilities were owned by Standard Oil, an Exxon Mobil predecessor. Leaking gasoline caused a spectacular sewer explosion in 1950 that sent manhole covers flying. The site was identified as an environmental hazard in 1978 when a Coast Guard patrol spotted an oily plume in Newtown Creek.
``There are people who live above this that still don't know about it,'' said Basil Seggos, chief investigator for Riverkeeper, an environmental group that sued in 2004 to try to force Exxon Mobil to clean up the creek. Others in Greenpoint have become spill experts, according to Seggos, and they say the fumes that rise from basements and sewers are especially bad when the barometer drops before a storm. ``The locals tell you they know when it's going to rain because they can smell the oil.''
Class Action
The lawsuits by environmentalists and residents allege that Exxon Mobil, BP Plc and other companies were negligent for failing to prevent the spill or clean it up once it was known. One case, a proposed class action, seeks $58 billion. Another is backed by the Los Angeles law firm that helped win the drinking- water contamination suit made famous in the 2000 movie ``Erin Brockovich.''
Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, has acted responsibly and is cleaning up the site, spokeswoman Premlata Nair said. ``Exxon Mobil does not believe any form of legal action is warranted,'' she said.
``The main concern to humans would be the benzene and methane and other dangerous components of the oil products,'' said Justin Bloom, a New York lawyer who works with Girardi & Keese, a firm in the Brockovich case.
Benzene is a known cancer-causing agent, while methane is a component of natural gas and poses a risk of explosion.
Indoor Air Sample
Bloom said no one has yet completed a study of possible health effects from the spill. ``The next significant step to be done is a significant sampling of indoor air,'' he said.
Girardi & Keese is suing Exxon Mobil, BP and other companies in state court on behalf of more than 400 Greenpoint residents. The plaintiffs are asking for a jury trial and unspecified damages. The firm's founder, Thomas Girardi, was lead counsel in Brockovich's suit against Pacific Gas & Electric, a unit of PG&E Corp. The more than 700 plaintiffs in that case won $333 million for health risks caused by chromium contamination in their drinking water.
Brockovich herself has spoken at community meetings in Greenpoint about the oil spill and the lawsuit.
State agencies, including the Department of Environmental Conservation, are studying the neighborhood to determine if harmful fumes from the spill are affecting residents. The study covers 250 homes, businesses and apartments, said Maureen Wren, a department spokeswoman.
The state estimates the Brooklyn spill at 17 million gallons, compared with the 11 million gallons the Exxon Valdez spilled after hitting Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound in 1989.
Neighborhood Awareness
The lawyers suing Exxon Mobil say the Brooklyn spill may be 30 million gallons. Riverkeeper, in its own suit against Exxon Mobil, seeks funds to map the extent of the spill, in addition to money for cleaning up Newtown Creek, where yellow plastic booms to contain spilled oil are a permanent fixture. The creek, which empties into the East River, divides Brooklyn from Queens.
Awareness of the spill is growing among those who live in the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, partly because of the new lawsuits.
``To us, it's so scary because we have no facts,'' said Carol O'Neill, a lifelong Greenpoint resident. O'Neill has owned her home on Morgan Street for 22 years and says Exxon Mobil knew about the spill and did nothing. ``Why aren't they moving on it if it can be such a health hazard to us?''
Exxon Mobil began its cleanup and monitoring efforts after signing a consent decree with the state of New York in 1990 that established a legally binding plan for the cleanup.
Remediation
``Our primary focus in Brooklyn has been to implement a remediation program that protects public health and the environment,'' spokeswoman Nair said in an e-mail. ``This will continue to be our focus, and we are committed to fully meet our responsibilities at the site.''
More than 9.3 million gallons of petroleum products have been recovered from Greenpoint, and the work continues, Nair said. She declined to discuss estimates of the size of the spill or how much money Exxon Mobil is spending on the cleanup.
The fishermen, landowners and others who sued over the Exxon Valdez spill, the worst oil tanker accident in U.S. history, were awarded $287 million for economic losses. Exxon Mobil was also required to pay punitive damages of $5 billion, an amount that has been altered by the courts several times, including last month, when a federal appeals court cut them to $2.5 billion.
Attorney General's Role
BP signed a consent decree in March that spells out how it will clean up the spill under its Greenpoint property, said spokeswoman Sarah Howell. She declined to comment on the lawsuits, citing company policy against discussing litigation.
``We obviously take our environmental responsibilities seriously,'' she said.
New York State was in negotiations with Exxon Mobil last year for a new agreement that would expand the scope of the cleanup. In June, the Department of Environmental Conservation referred the matter to the attorney general's office after failing to get Exxon Mobil to sign on, department spokeswoman Wren said.
The attorney general's office may sue the company if its own negotiations fail, said spokesman Marc Violette.
Exxon Mobil and BP are using recovery wells dug on their property and in adjacent areas to draw the oil products from underground. The oil floats on top of the water table, so pumps draw the water down and pull the oil off the top. The water taken out is treated and released into Newtown Creek, while the fuels are recycled and sold.
Thousands of Spills
New York City's water comes mostly from reservoirs outside the city, rather than from wells, so the Greenpoint spill hasn't affected drinking water supplies.
According to environmentalists, lawyers and Exxon Mobil, the oil in the earth beneath Greenpoint is the cumulative effect of perhaps thousands of spills over many years. After Mobil Corp. shut its refinery in 1965, the land was used for fuel storage until 1993. BP still uses storage tanks in the area.
``Things just leaked and leaked and leaked,'' said Marc Bern, a senior partner at Napoli Bern Ripka LLP, the New York law firm seeking federal class action status on behalf of residents for a $58 billion claim against Exxon Mobil, BP and other companies.
``Basically, what Exxon would have to do to effectively remediate the problem is buy Greenpoint'' to get to the soil beneath the buildings, said Bern.
Hudson Cleanup
Riverkeeper's Seggos compares the Greenpoint spill to the contamination of the silt at the bottom of the Hudson River by more than 1 million pounds (454,000 kilograms) of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, dumped from General Electric Co. plants between 1947 and 1977.
Decades later, GE is still dealing with the problem. The company has so far spent $313 million on research, legal action and the early phase of remediation, said spokesman Peter O'Toole. In 2005, the company agreed to a cleanup plan that may cost $700 million and take until 2013.
Seggos and plaintiffs' lawyers say they will keep pressure on the companies until the spill is cleaned up.
``Things have been moving very slowly,'' said Barry Swidler, president of Long Island Carpet Cleaners Inc., which has owned its plant in Greenpoint since 1970. Exxon Mobil installed a ventilation system in his building after vapors and odors were detected.
Swidler said he wanted more information about any dangers that might come from the fumes and about the cleanup. ``The government needs to come in here and tell us what's going on.''
