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DUMBO Tour, Location 8

The first Smelling Committee was in search of unseen maladies. People in the 19th and early 20th centuries used to have to close their windows all summer due to the foul industrial stenches. John D. Rockefeller chose Newtown Creek as the site for his Standard Oil company in 1870. What was once a playground of wealthy mansions quickly transformed into a hotbed shuttling industry goods to and from the ocean along the railroad. There were oil refineries, sewage treatment plants and factories like the Cooper Glue Company (founder of the Cooper Union art and design school), which boiled the refuse of tanneries and slaughterhouses into glue and gelatin. Soon all kinds of industrial wastes were filling the creek, including a mixture of glue and putrefying bovines that formed what was known as Dead Animal Wharf. In the early 1900’s, the 3 ½ mile creek did almost as much business as the Mississippi River in pure tonnage. The Mississippi is 3,900 miles long.

The oil refineries have had a long-lasting effect on Brooklyn, Queens and the East River. Even as the waterfront is developed into lofts and condos, a glossy rainbow of oil slick and black goo is slowly expanding into the East River, underground and along the shoreline of Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Queens, stretching towards Manhattan and deeper into Brooklyn. Residents can smell gas in their pipes especially when it rains and the water molecules make the odor more apparent. The Newtown Creek is so toxic that fireman who swallowed some of the creek water while saving someone from drowning, died two days later.

One of the world’s largest oil spills occurred in the 1940s and 50s due to underground leaks. ExxonMobil is primarily held responsible for the17 million gallon oil spill, which encompasses 55 acres and growing. The spill was discovered about 30 years later in 1978. Although the spill is larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska and it’s in an urban area, clean-up only began in 1995 and has been painfully slow. Merely 8.5 million gallons of the toxic sludge have been removed.

There is a very active group of advocates and residents called Riverkeeper that monitors the creek, and recently won a lawsuit to have the State Attorney General prosecute the case, as well as have the EPA perform a study of the toxicity and effects of the spill. As a prime example of the entrepreneurial spirit and tradition of DIY Williamsburg, a fellow who learned about the spill and began drilling for oil. But he only got about 20 feet down before neighbors began complaining about the stench.

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Smelling Committee

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recycling , brooklyn , smell , art , new york , industry , stinky , smelling committee , dumbo