The Billiken's Bluff

I was listening to WFAN’s Mike and the Mad Dog on Friday. Mike Francesa brought an important story to The Bluff's attention and offered some insightful commentary to accompany it.

[Via XTRAMSN]

International Olympic Committee members visit New York next week to judge the city's bid for the 2012 Games but they're in for a surprise: In a creek next to the proposed Olympic Village is a half-century-old, 17-million gallon oil spill.

The festering brew -- half again as big as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, is an underground cesspool of gasoline, diesel and heating oil that seeps into Newtown Creek, a waterway that hugs Hunter's Point, where 16,000 athletes and coaches would live and train should New York win its bid to host the Olympics. The neighborhood in the city's borough of Queens is almost directly across the East River from midtown Manhattan.

The 13-member IOC Evaluation Committee arrives on Sunday on a fact-finding tour of proposed sites that Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff, founder of NYC2012, the organization advocating the city's bid, described as critical to New York's chances.

New York is competing against Paris, London, Moscow and Madrid for the 2012 Olympics. The IOC decides in July.

The toxic state of the waterway is likely to come up, given the committee's assessment of the environmental impact of any bid.

"You have to smell it for yourself," said Teresa Toro, who lives two blocks from the polluted creek.

"The fumes are unbelievable," Toro said. She is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last year against ExxonMobil Corp, the corporate descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, whose refineries lined Newtown Creek since 1875 along with other industrial firms.

Mobil, without admitting any fault for the spill, signed a consent agreement with the city Department of Environmental Protection in 1990 to begin a clean-up, which litigants charge has been inadequate.

Spur To Cleanup?

Environmental group Riverkeeper, another plaintiff in the suit, says dangerous vapors pose a health hazard.

"A boat trip up the creek is a journey into the heart of darkness, with the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline as a reminder of its real world locale," said Basil Seggos, Riverkeeper's chief litigator.



The Department of Health reports the area's asthma, emphysema and bronchitis rates are 25 percent higher than in the rest of the city.

Low levels of exposure to benzene, a component in gasoline, can cause memory loss and seizures, and high levels can cause cancer and death, the Environmental Protection Agency says.

"It's clearly an issue that we're well aware of," said Jay Kriegel, executive director of NYC2012. "It's an environmental situation that is being dealt with, but if we get the Olympics it would become a major priority and there would be an aggressive program to accelerate action."

============================================================

Francesa reacting to the story:

“What was the Olympic Commitee's second choice for the Village? On top of a nuclear reactor?!?!?” [Francesa in his best Rockville Center-NY-Italian-accented twang.]

And Francesa commenting on Bloomberg's troubles with this oil spill and the delays with the proposed Westside stadium:

“What’s happened to Bloomberg? It’s like the last 12 passes he’s thrown have been intercepted and returned for touchdowns.”

But seriously though how ridiculous is this quote:

"It's clearly an issue that we're well aware of," said Jay Kriegel, executive director of NYC2012. "It's an environmental situation that is being dealt with, but if we get the Olympics it would become a major priority and there would be an aggressive program to accelerate action."

What Kriegel is saying is that if NYC doesn't get the 2012 Olympic Bid, then the residents who live in this section of Queens can basically FUGHEDABOUT getting this "underground cesspool" cleaned up.