Newtown Creek
| Newtown Creek | |
|---|---|
The Creek in Long Island City | |
Newtown Creek and its tributaries | |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New York |
| Municipality | New York City |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Source | Confluence of East Branch and English Kills |
| • coordinates | 40°43′06″N 73°55′27″W / 40.718412°N 73.924127°W |
| Mouth | East River |
• location | 2nd Street and 54th Avenue in Long Island City |
• coordinates | 40°44′14″N 73°57′40″W / 40.73734°N 73.96112°W |
• elevation | 0 ft (0 m) |
| Length | 3.5 mi (5.6 km) |
| Discharge | |
| • average | 59.3 cu ft/s (1.68 m3/s) |
| Basin features | |
| Tributaries | |
| • left | English Kills, Whale Creek |
| • right | Maspeth Creek, Dutch Kills |
Newtown Creek, a 3.5-mile (6-kilometer) 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 United States, containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30,000,000 US gallons (110,000,000 L; 25,000,000 imp gal) 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. The EPA has delayed its cleanup until 2032.