Anthony Weiner: “Mr. Chairman, I want to highlight an amendment that I offered which has been included in Chairman Oberstar's amendment…”

“Mr. Chairman, I want to highlight an amendment that I offered which has been included in Chairman Oberstar's amendment before the House. It directs the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a study of the Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York underground oil spill at Newtown Creek. Newtown Creek is a 3.5 mile-long waterway that flows from the East River and separates the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. It is the single most polluted waterway in New York City, a legacy left by more than a century of heavy industrial activity. The creek's banks are home to the largest oil spill in the United States, which dates back to the 1950s and is estimated to be 150 percent of the size of the Exxon-Valdez spill. In 1978, a Coast Guard patrol detected petroleum on the surface of Newtown Creek and identified a spill that spreads from the banks of the creek through the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn. Evaluations at that time identified a spill totaling 17 million gallons attributed to refineries operated along the banks of the creek by the predecessors to ExxonMobil, BP/Amoco and Chevron-Texaco. To date, 9.4 million gallons have been cleaned, primarily conducted by ExxonMobil under a 1990 consent agreement with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that sets no timetable for completion and includes no meaningful criteria for compliance.”