wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Current New York Attorney General and Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo came to the blustery banks of the Newtown Creek Wednesday to announce a landmark settlement that will force Exxon Mobil to clean-up a multimillion gallon, underground oil spill that has vexed Greenpoint residents for decades.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is announcing a settlement Wednesday afternoon of federal litigation against Exxon Mobil for contaminating parts of Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Newtown Creek, a heavily polluted waterway that separates Queens and Brooklyn, was given designation last month that will allow it to be cleaned up under the federal Superfund program. Now a group of elected officials is calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to forget the Queens side of the creek. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney says so far, the EPA hasn't studied the creek's impact on Queens communities.

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency named Newtown Creek, the polluted industrial waterway that runs between Brooklyn and Queens, a Superfund site. On today’s Underreported Update, Katie Schmid, director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, explains what the designation will mean for the creek and the people who live nearby, and why it’s taken so long for any cleanup effort to begin.

(Image courtesy of Ann Fraioli)

This morning, a couple of teachers from the Harbor School were down at the Newtown Creek in Brooklyn and snapped this photo, of what they believe is a dolphin. Could it be the nearly extinct ...