NY State Will Take ExxonMobil To Court On Greenpoint Spill

[hatrack]

After decades of negotiating highly criticized consent orders with oil giant ExxonMobil regarding the cleanup of a massive oil spill underneath Greenpoint, the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has taken the big step of referring the case to the Attorney General's Office for litigation.

"In New York State, it is our policy that the polluter pays to clean up the contamination it caused," said DEC Commissioner Denise Sheehan last week in a statement announcing the decision. "DEC has been conducting extensive negotiations with ExxonMobil - even very recently - but the company's offers did not meet the State's level of satisfaction that the Greenpoint community would be fully protected...and appropriately compensated."

As Sheehan noted, DEC and ExxonMobil have been negotiating a consent order that outlines a voluntary cleanup of the more than 17 million gallons that leaked into an area 55 acres large under the North Brooklyn neighborhood, eventually finding its way to Newtown Creek. The last consent order between the two was signed in 1990. The closed-door nature of consent orders, however, has been soundly criticized by environmental groups as being little more than a tactic to let large polluters off the hook, allowing them in many cases to set a self-interested timeline for cleanup, as well as a means to avoid stiff penalties. "For far too long, the state has allowed ExxonMobil to slide by and avoid a serious cleanup effort at Newtown Creek," reacted Councilman David Yassky to news that the Attorney General would now be prosecuting ExxonMobil. "Now, after years of government dysfunction, we finally have an opportunity to force a speedy and comprehensive remediation."

The huge oil spill was first brought to the public's attention when a Coast Guard patrol spotted oil seeping into Newtown Creek where Meeker Street meets the polluted waterway. While ExxonMobil originally denied culpability for the spill, they eventually took responsibility and the issue was relatively out of the general public's scope. That was until a boat manned by members of the environmental watchdog group Riverkeeper noticed oil on the creek a few years back. They enlisted the help of six local residents-turned-plaintiffs, and filed a federal Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery act lawsuit on their behalf. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Councilman David Yassky eventually joined suit, as did their colleague on the other side of the creek, Long Island City Councilman Eric Gioia.

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