Newtown Creek

Newtown Creek, a 3.5mi long tributary of the East River, is an estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in New York City. Channelization made it one of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey and thus one of the most polluted industrial sites in the US, containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated of spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from New York City’s sewer system, and other accumulation from a total of 1,491 sites.Newtown Creek was proposed as a potential Superfund site in September 2009, and received that designation on September 27, 2010.CourseThe creek begins near the intersection of 47th Street and Grand Avenue on the Brooklyn-Queens border at the intersection of the East Branch and English Kills. It empties into the East River at 2nd Street and 54th Avenue in Long Island City, opposite Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan at 26th Street. Its waterfront, and that of its tributaries Dutch Kills, Whale Creek, Maspeth Creek and English Kills, are heavily industrialized.