The presence of oil in parts of Greenpoint is well documented, but it looks like someone wants the oil to be cleaned up. This morning there was artwork in the Queens-bound Nassau Avenue G stop asking for a stop to the oil spills. The artwork shows drops of oil on the walls of the station, pools of oil collected on the floors, and paper towels for straphangers to clean up the spill. Reader Shannan tells......

Crews are working to remove oil from Long Island shoreline that spilled into the ocean sometime on Thanksgiving Day and started washing ashore. Surfers called the Coast Guard to report "tar-like balls of oil." A number of agencies, including the Coast Guard and NY State DEP, are working on the cleanup. The spill seems to be about 500 gallons of no. 6 oil, an unrefined bunker oil, and Newsday reports the samples from the spill......

Yesterday morning, surfers contacted the Coast Guard about "tar-like balls of oil washing up" on the shoreline of Lido Beach, near Jones Beach on Long Island. The surfers said they also had oil on their wet suits. The spill seems to be about 3000 feet wide and 1500 feet long. Now the Coast Guard, working with other local, state and federal agencies, are trying to figure out where the spill is coming from as they......

SFist witnessed a new apartment building tszuj the skyline with spectacular, gaudy turquoise aplomb, the (informal) renaming of the Mission/SOMA neighborhood border, the return of the Maltese Falcon, the Mayor Gavin Newsom mea culpa-ing over his Hawaiian getaway during the oil spill, and double-decker buses hitting the streets of San Francisco. Oh, and some baseball player named Barry Bonds is a liar whose pants, it seems, are totally on fire. LAist continues to cover the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: falling debris on W 47th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, a shooting on Broadway on Staten Island, and a suspicious boat at the Verrazano Bridge near Brooklyn. For a reason unrelated to terrorism, the U.S. Parks Dept. is going to keep the crown of the Statue of Liberty closed because it's a fire death-trap. Iranian President Mahmoud Amahdinejad's wish to visit Ground Zero was blocked due to security......

Will there ever be a point when there are stories about the Greenpoint oil spill cleanup, instead of stories about how big and dangerous the spill is? Representatives Anthony Weiner and Nydia Velazquez released the results of the first EPA study (first study ever after, what, 29 years!) of the Greenpoint oil spill, and they are pretty ugly. Here some excerpts from the press release: The original estimated size of the spill of 17 million......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

State attorney general Andrew Cuomo filed suit against oil giant Exxon Mobil to clean up an oil spill along Newtown Creek that is estimated to be twice as large as the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. The suit also names BP, Chevron, KeySpan and Phelps Dodge and is seeking action and fines against the companies that spilled approximately 20 million gallons of fuel into the ground and water of industrial Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Saturday Night Live in the '90s: Pop Culture Nation (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WNBC 4) A look back at SNL in the 1990s with clips and interviews with former cast members. The Mormons (Sunday 9:00 p.m., WLIW 21) If you missed it last week on WNET, here is your chance to take a watch at this two part look at the Mormons which is a collaboration of two......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Nature - Dogs That Changed the World: Dogs by Design (Sunday, 8:00 p.m. WNET 13; Wednesday 9:00 p.m. WLIW 21) The second and final part of the story of the dog looks at how humans created the various dog breeds and the modern day consequences. Today (Monday, 7:00 a.m., WNBC 4) Another outing of Where in the World is Matt Lauer starts Monday morning. The Mormons (Monday......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap-- large brush fire in Brooklyn, high angle rescue in midtown, and a perp search on Prospect Park West in Park Slope. The Times has a nice spotlight piece on Queens' local papers-- the big players are the Queens Courier, the Times Ledger chain, and the Queens Chronicle. Objective, from the Resume of Ethan Carter Rutherford III, Age 2: "To pursue a Pre-School diploma at a top-tier institution that will......

Yesterday, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that the State will sue ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Keyspan and Phelps Dodge over a 17-million-gallon oil spill in Newtown Creek that has spread underneath Greenpoint over 100 acres. The spill was detected in 1978, when a Coast Guard pilot noticed an oil plume; oil seeped underground from ExxonMobil refinery and storage operations since the 1950s. Attorney General Cuomo said:This is one of the worst environmental disasters in the......

One part of last week's NY State Department of Environmental Conservation press release about the Greenpoint oil spill was "information on planned vapor and indoor air sampling will be discussed" during next Wednesday's meeting. And it looks like it means sampling in homes, as the Daily News reports that Greenpoint homeowners are being urged to sign up for emergency gas testing. The fear is that toxic gases have been affecting people's health. While ExxonMobil says,......

Earlier this year, State Comptroller Alan Hevesi asked that the Department of Environmental Conservation not negotiate a settlement agreement with ExxonMobil about a 1978 oil spill of 17 million gallons (bigger than the Valdez spill) off Newtown Creek. And now, tests that the DEC performed show there are "elevated levels of the carcinogen benzene and the potentially combustible gas methane in the soil". Oh, dear. There will be a public hearing to discuss the new......

State Comptroller Hevesi's foot, meet State Comptroller Hevesi's mouth! At the crossroads of bad introductions and bad commencement speeches, Alan Hevesi was number one - with a bullet - when he lamely tried to fete Queens College honoree Senator Charles Schumer by saying, "We really feel bad for poor Chuck, the U.S. Senator, the man who, uh, uh, how do I phrase this diplomatically, who will put a bullet between the president's eyes if he......

That's what State Comptroller Alan Hevesi is asking. He advised the Department of Environmental Conservation not to negotiate an agreement with Exxon over the Greenpoint oil spill clean up because the spill needs to be thoroughly examined. Back in 1978, a Coast Guard pilot noticed an oil plume off Newtown Creek: It turned out that 17 million gallons (more than the 11 million from the Exxon Valdez spill) of oil had been spilling since the......

When most of us think of oil spills, we think of cute seal pups that end up coated with the stuff, with scruffy Greenpeacers on bended knee trying to scrub them clean. But some Brooklynites have had only one thing on their mind thanks to a 55 acre oil spill that took place over 50 years ago: cancer. A 1950 tanker explosion that leaked almost 17 million gallons of oil and gas into the ground......