Case Studies
Newtown Creek
For Gregory Hile, founder and president of EnviroJustice, environmental justice is a very personal matter. One of the first coalitions EnviroJustice embraced was Newtown Creek. Ask people where the largest oil spill in America took place and the likely answer is Alaska and the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989.
The actual answer is much closer to home for most Americans: Brooklyn, New York, to be exact. To be even more precise, the oil spill lies directly underneath Greg's daughter Lindsay's home. Possibly more than twice the size of the Exxon Valdez incident, the underground spill into Newtown Creek began as early as the 1940s and has yet to be cleaned up.
Recently, however, some progress has been made. On October 16, 2006, Senator Charles Schumer, Representatives Anthony Weiner and Nydia Velazquez and several local officials announced the commencement of an EPA study of Newtown Creek, which is to be completed by July, 2007.
In addition to the EPA study, which will assess Newtown Creek's soil, water and air to determine the oil spill's health impact on local residents, the legislators are also calling for comprehensive testing to document the prevalence of Methane and Benzene vapors produced by the spill. The legislators also called for creation of a health registry for local residents following news the day before that four cases of the rare sarcoma bone cancer were identified in Greenpoint, the neighborhood near Newtown Creek that Greg's daughter lives in. Funding for the study will come from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund and hopefully Newtown Creek will soon become one of our featured success stories.
For more information, including a timetable of significant events, visit our Newtown Creek page.
Concord Naval Weapons Station
The site of the former Concord Naval Weapons Station is one of the largest remaining developable areas in the San Francisco Bay Area. Consisting of more than 5,000 acres, much of the former weapons station is relatively pristine rolling hills visible from Highways 4 and 242. In addition, Mount Diablo Creek, the last freely flowing creek in Contra Costa County, flows right through the heart of the military base. The cold clean water of this stream attracts salmon and trout, among many other species.
There are a number of competing ideas about how to develop the property and the U.S. Navy has even proposed bypassing the city and trading the land to a consulting company to be developed without public input.
EnviroJustice is working with a coalition of environmental and faith-based organizations to fashion a sensible development that would address the location and amount of open space, the type and number of new houses, the transportation system, and many other factors.
For more information, including a timetable of significant events, visit our Concord Naval Weapons Station page.
Love Canal
While there is no specific founding point for the environmental justice movement, the Love Canal story of the late 1970s and early 1980s has helped to bring environmental justice issues into national prominence. Here you will find some of the significant milestones in the drama that was and still is Love Canal.
Today, the waterway that gave the neighborhood its name is buried under a plastic liner, clay and topsoil in a fenced area declared permanently off-limits. Scores of homes were buried, but the rest of Love Canal was declared safe by the New York State Department of Health and the EPA. A public corporation took ownership of the abandoned properties, fixed up the homes and resold them.
The community is now known as Black Creek Village, and, in a report by CNN in 1998, the new residents of Black Creek Village feel safe in their new homes. "This area has been tested and tested and tested," said homeowner Trudy Christman. "This is the most tested piece of real estate in the United States."
For more information, including a timetable of significant events, visit our Love Canal page.