NYC's Newtown Creek added to US Superfund list

Newtown Creek, a 3 1/2-mile estuary between Brooklyn and Queens, is among seven hazardous waste sites placed on the national Superfund list, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday.

The director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, Katie Schmid, said the advocacy group is "very excited" about the federal oversight and resources implicit in the announcement.

The creek, the site of a decades-old oil spill from defunct refineries in Greenpoint, has long been considered an eyesore.

The environmental group Riverkeeper said the designation begins a cleanup of "more than a century's worth of contamination from the creek's murky bottom." Riverkeeper said continuing pollution problems there will also be addressed.

On March 2, the EPA also named the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn a Superfund site.

- AP