The orange stain around this groundwater outflow is a telltale sign of metal pollution, according to one scientist. Tribune photo by Ira Cohen Under The Surface The possible danger lies in the historical link between the Riverview complex and the eight acres of open land just west of the condos—about 500 feet from the Mantione’s front door. Both the condos and the open land are part of a single landmass that cannot be found in city maps or aerial photos of the College Point waterfront from the before 1960. The entire area was created through a process of illegal dumping that began in 1963 and continued until around 1976. It was an era when illegal waste disposal and land filling on the shoreline was all too common in College Point, a practice that literally changed the shape of the neighborhood waterfront. “I saw when the dumping started,” said local watchdog Joan Vogt of the Northeast Queens Nature and Historical Preservation Commission. “Everything and anything came into that place. There were millions made on that landfill.” Today, a walk along the undeveloped western shoreline at low tide reveals all sorts sunken debris from which the land was made: rusty girders bend around concrete slabs, gravestones removed from a Jewish cemetery sit wedged among dark red bricks and fragments of corrugated metal. By 1977, when two brothers from Brooklyn named Jay and Theodore Schorr purchased the entire site and prepared to build Riverview, more than 40 acres had been claimed from the waters. Over the decades of dumping, however, the landfill was not limited to construction debris and other solid materials. According to a report by the Environmental Technology Group (ETG), a firm hired by College Point Properties to create a clean up for the open portion of the site, soil hot spots consisting of toxic metals, PCBs, oozing petroleum products and a mix of volatile organic compounds were also deposited on the landfill. “The primary suspected cause of these hot spots is [the] crushing of drums of industrial sludge wastes,” the report reads, “primarily located in the east central portion of the site”—a part of the open site, in other words, that is less than 10 feet from existing Riverview homes. Officials at the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation approved the clean-up plan devised by ETG for College Point Properties last summer. Before building, the developer will have to spend millions remediating the worst contamination on the open site. According to the clean-up agreement with the DEC, each home must be constructed above an impermeable plastic sheet, which will be covered by two feet of clean soil, and must include an exhaust pipe to vent fumes trapped beneath the sheet. The earliest cluster of Riverview condos was created in 1980, with all permits for the project issued before the reforms to state environmental regulations that followed the Love Canal scandal in 1979. As a result, none of the engineering elements required by the DEC today to safeguard the new development were used on Riverview. “I have the blueprints,” said Mike Jennings, who manages one of the five condo clusters at Riverview. “There is nothing in there.” Is There A Link? Nobody knows if the elevated levels of dangerous pollutants identified in the open portion of the landfill exist in the ground beneath Riverview. Physical evidence uncovered by Cervino and supported by findings in the ETG report has raised red flags that similar conditions may be present around the condos. At low tide, Cervino found that several springs of groundwater flow from the western edge of the landfill into the East River. At one of these springs, stones and landfill debris at the mouth of the outflow are stained a deep orange color. A telltale odor of rotten eggs, caused by high levels of hydrogen sulfide, wafts around the stained location. “It is not a naturally occurring orange spot there—it’s coming from in the landfill,” Cervino said. “It is an indicator that there is some sort of metal oxidation occurring. Whatever’s in there that is causing this rust-like orange goo is killing anything living that you would find and inhibiting any kind of life.” According to Cervino, who studies these sort of tidal wetlands areas where salt-water bodies collide with subterranean fresh-water aquifers, the contaminated water runs beneath the Riverview complex. As a result, Cervino said, it seems likely that the source of the contamination is buried below the condos. In the ETG report, which analyzed dozens of soil and groundwater samples from the open site, this assumption finds support. “Some off site contamination is suspected at four of the [sample] locations closest to the east property line [i.e. bordering Riverview],” the report stated, suggesting that pollutants from the Riverview side of the property line “may move from off site sources towards the site.” No known studies of the soil and groundwater on the Riverview side of the site have ever been completed, and Cervino admits that samples from around the condos will be required before the condition of the land there can be determined. But Vogt, the watchdog who monitored and fought the dumping throughout the 1960s, believes that testing will reveal pollution beneath the condos. “It’s the same dumping on one side of that line as on the other,” she said. “It was all the same back then.” The Next Step Cervino has briefed only a few of the residents at this point, and a community meeting is planned for Feb. 7 at the nearby Poppenhusen Institute to discuss the situation at Riverview—including how to get blood tests and a discussion of raising money for soil and groundwater samples. The results of an independent analysis of groundwater samples from the western edge of the open site—a test conducted by Cervino and funded by Vogt’s Northeast Queens Commission—will be discussed at a private commission meeting later this week. The results will be made public by the end of the month. Riverview and College Point residents with questions about environmental safety in the area can contact James Cervino by email at cnidaria@earthlink.net.

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