NEW YORK – Feb. 26, 2024 – THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to serving the people of New York announced today the launch of “Hazard NYC,” a four-part audio-visual series exploring the four federal Superfund sites in New York City. The series features four podcasts and accompanying scrolling visuals, showcasing powerful storytelling, with each episode tackling a Superfund site.
The series, featuring THE CITY’s senior reporter Samantha Maldonado and independent journalist Jordan Gass-Pooré, explores the past, present and future of the Superfund sites and how climate change could affect clean-up efforts spearheaded by the federal government.
The first installment, released on Feb. 14, focuses on Newtown Creek, one of the country’s most polluted waterways. Maldonado and Gass-Pooré dive into the four miles of polluted waters spanning western Queens and northern Brooklyn, where flooding from rising sea levels and storms threaten to spread the creek’s contamination.
The second installment looks into the Meeker Avenue Plume, where a reservoir of toxic chemicals lies below homes and businesses in Greenpoint and East Williamsburg. Maldonado and Gass-Pooré talk to locals who live on top of the plume and emphasize “It’s more than just a toxic site.”
Wolff-Alport Chemical Company, the focus of the third installment of the series, is a small patch of land in Ridgewood, Queens. The former company played a role in nuclear weapons development and left behind radiological contamination. In this episode, Maldonado and Gass-Pooré discuss the health risks posed to workers at the site and the controversial steps taken to remove the risk.
The last installment delves into the Gowanus Canal’s legacy contamination, ongoing sewage spills and frequent flooding — all amid a development boom in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Maldonado and Gass-Pooré explore how effects of climate change and Gowanus’ industrial past haunt its redeveloped future.
Maldonado and Gass-Pooré will discuss their work and the implications of Superfund sites and the effects of climate change on nearby communities during a community conversation hosted by THE CITY on Feb. 27 at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central location at Grand Army Plaza.
“In our dense, urban environment, New Yorkers live in close proximity to these federal Superfund sites, so it’s important to understand how they got to be contaminated and how the effects of climate change could change the stakes,” said Maldonado.
Hazard NYC was made possible by from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. The project was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and is part of the Pulitzer Center’s Connected Coastlines initiative. Hazard NYC is sponsored in part by Brooklyn SolarWorks.
To explore the series, click here.
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ABOUT THE CITY: THE CITY (thecity.nyc) is a nonprofit digital news platform whose mission is to produce free-to-read, local reporting that serves the people of New York City. Launched in 2019 to fill critical local reporting gaps, THE CITY covers New York’s uncovered neighborhoods, holds the powerful to , and helps make sense of the greatest city in the world. THE CITY Scoop, its flagship newsletter, is delivered weekdays and Sunday, while additional newsletters serve New Yorkers with news they can use on housing, jobs and civic engagement.
