Odessa

Greenpoint is a community Brooklyn, NY. They have the best Polish food you are going to find on this side of the Atlantic. You hear Polish when you walk down the street. Also, a large portion is very industrial. They stand in the shadow of NYC's main sewage treatment plant. They are home to many large distributors and have many trucks running up and down their streets, frequently blocking in them.

Standard Oil (grand pappy to all the big league oil companies now) and some of its offspring leaked, spilled, etc, about 18 million gallon of petroleum products. There is a layer of oil floating on the groundwater that is several feet thick in some places. The "big three", are extracting the goop, and they have gotten out more than 9 million gallons so far. Exxon-Mobil is considered the largest contributor.

There have been some vapor problems in a nearby commercial area. However, no one knows if vapors from this goop are getting into peoples homes. State agencies have been trying to get into peoples homes to do the testing to find out, but people were reluctant to let Exxon-Mobil in their homes, even under close scrutiny. The standard operating procedure would have been to give Exxon-Mobile the opportunity to hire someone themselves. The state decided to do the sampling themselves to try to get over the hurdle of the community's discomfort with Exxon-Mobil. Exxon-Mobil wasn't being all that cooperative on other issues, anyway. (The state had recently negotiated agreements on other issue with BP-Ammaco and Chevon.)

Getting the sampling done is a good thing. The community is cautiously happier. Now it will be interesting to see if Exxon-Mobil pays the bill from the sampling in homes willingly or makes the State of New York fight them for it. Also, if any additional work needs to be done to keep vapors out of peoples house, whether they will do it. That is a long way down the road, but it will be interesting. I certainly hope they do the right thing with all their record earnings.