How Will the Superfund Designation Affect Greenpointers?
by Henry Stewart
Of course, it'll literally mean a comprehensive clean-up of the waterway—or, the whatever-it-is. "It's not water anymore," Katie Schmid, director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, told Leonard Lopate yesterday. Not literally, of course, but the Creek has become seriously polluted from decades of misuse and abuse, not to mention from sewer overflows, which dump not only raw sewage but petroleum and anti-freeze (run off from streets into sewers), as well as trash and debris like coffee cups and plastic bags. (That's where they go when, for example, you litter or try to balance garbage atop an overflowing garbage can. Rain washes them into the sewer.)
A cleaner creek will mean a healthier, less cancerous population, as will the simultaneous state-run clean-up of the staggering oil spill beneath the neighborhood. But, how will the actual Superfund process affect people's, like, everyday lives?
