Federal officials said they now have a plan to measure and mitigate poisonous vapors that may have “potentially impacted” more than 1,000 Brooklyn properties in East Williamsburg and Greenpoint for decades.
According to the Gothamist, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discussed their proposal to deal with the Meeker Avenue plume at a public meeting last week. The plume, which was first discovered in 2005, spans approximately 45 city blocks and is the result of toxic chemicals left by local dry cleaners, foundries and metalworking shops.
The EPA designated the stretch of properties as a federal Superfund site in 2022. The first steps of the cleanup entails assessing the extent of the poisonous vapors, which could take about five years, the news site said.
Some residents at the meeting said they worried about what years of possible exposure to the chemicals could mean for their health, the news site reported.
