Site History
(From EPA)
EPA added the Meeker Avenue Plume site to the Superfund program’s National Priorities List (NPL) in March 2022. The Meeker Avenue Plume site is in the Greenpoint/East Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York and spans several city blocks. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway roughly bisects the site in a west-southwest to east-northeast direction. The former ExxonMobil Brooklyn Terminal/BP Terminal is to the north of the site and Newtown Creek is to the east.
(View the Maps page to obtain visual detail on the geographical extent of the site.)
The soil and groundwater at the Meeker Avenue Plume site are contaminated with chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs), including tetrachloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), cis-1,2-dichloroethylene (DCE), and vinyl chloride. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) discovered the contaminants while overseeing a cleanup action at an adjacent ExxonMobil petroleum plume, which overlaps the northeastern portion of the Meeker Avenue Plume site.
(Learn about vapor intrusion – how these chemicals can potentially penetrate the interior of a property.)
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) has been investigating soil, groundwater, soil gas, outdoor and indoor air since 2007. NYSDEC identified several sources of contamination below the surface of soil. NYSDEC’s registry lists sites that pose a significant threat to human health and the environment. NYSDEC installed sub-slab depressurization systems (SSDS) to reduce the impacts of vapor intrusion to residential and commercial buildings. SSDS uses an electric fan to prevent contaminated vapors below a building from entering the structure, and instead, the potentially contaminated air is vented outside above the building structure. NYSEC has not yet identified the full extent of contamination in the groundwater or of how vapors in the soil may be contaminating indoor air in buildings at the Meeker Avenue Plume site. Now that the site has been added to Superfund’s National Priorities List, EPA will fully investigate the extent of contamination and work to permanently cleanup the contaminated plume.